Hospitals: Capital Investment

Lord Harris of Haringey: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	How much money has been spent on new and refurbished hospitals in the past eight years compared with the previous eight years.

Lord Warner: My Lords, the total capital investment in new hospital building schemes and the refurbishment and re-equipping of existing hospitals over the past eight years is almost £18 billion. That compares with £12.5 billion in the previous eight years. Further increases are planned, with annual capital investment in the NHS expected to reach £8 billion in 2007–08. That will be almost six times the annual capital spend on the NHS in 1996–97.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that response. I hesitate to enter a partisan note into the deliberations of your Lordships' House—

Noble Lords: Oh!

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, I would be grateful, however, if my noble friend would speculate on the implications of the Conservative Party's plans for future public expenditure, and in particular on the bizarre suggestion from the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer that certain taxes should be made voluntary if people do not like the issue on which the money might be spent or simply feel that they do not use the service concerned.

Lord Warner: My Lords, like many Members on this side of the House, I shudder at the prospect of what might happen. It is worth bearing in mind that the money that I mentioned has helped us to complete 49 hospital schemes since 1997, with another 33 under construction. I find it difficult to believe that, under the measures mentioned by my noble friend, we could have that kind of record if the Conservatives were in government. They seem terribly interested in redistributing money from the NHS and putting those resources into the pockets of people who want to pay for private healthcare.

Lord Marsh: My Lords, I should declare an interest as someone who received a knighthood for spending public money in British Rail. Does the Minister accept that there is nothing terribly difficult about spending public money? He is too modest. All those who remember the likes of the Dome realise that the Government are good at it. The key thing is whether you get satisfied customers. Will he give us an example of how many people are spending their life savings to leave the country for India or somewhere because they are not madly keen on the product?

Lord Warner: My Lords, I do not have the noble Lord's experience in the transport industry, but I can reassure him that we have also spent money on producing 77,000 more nurses and 19,000 more doctors. Early mortality from cancer has dropped dramatically in this country—the fastest drop in Europe. Those people who are still alive as the result of the services put in place are pretty satisfied customers. I hope that a major drop in coronary heart disease deaths will mean another fairly satisfied group of customers. There are reduced waiting times for in-patient treatment; I could go on.

Earl Howe: My Lords, the new money that has gone into the NHS is good news all round and everyone welcomes it. However, why is the NHS budget now £0.5 billion in the red? Announcements from six NHS trusts recently showed that, from those trusts alone, almost 500 beds, an orthopaedic unit and a pathology lab were set to be closed, and that 470 front-line staff had either been or were about to be laid off. Will the Minister assure us that the new and refurbished hospitals will have the money to stay open?

Lord Warner: My Lords, what I can say is that the revenue budgets for the NHS will reach about £92 billion in 2007–08, compared with £69 billion. That will be a much better position in which to cope with a little modest underspending of the kind that the noble Earl mentioned than would be the case if his party were in power, with its NHS policies.

Lord Turnberg: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the charitable sector makes an important contribution to the capital programmes of the NHS? Would it be possible for the Department of Health to encourage greater partnerships between the charitable sector—the research charities and others—and the NHS?

Lord Warner: My Lords, the Department of Health warmly supports more partnerships with the voluntary sector. This morning, I visited a hospice run by the voluntary sector in St Albans. It was this Government who put in place a compact between the Department of Health and the voluntary sector for work in the NHS sector; it was this Government who have produced a Bill on charity reform.

Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the Minister gave some impressive statistics, but is it not a fact that more people have died in hospital as a result of dirty wards than have died as a result of accidents on the roads? What will the Government do about that?

Lord Warner: My Lords, the growth of MRSA was most acute between 1993 and 1997.

Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, the development of these many excellent new hospitals and the refurbishment of the old has been most welcome in the NHS, but why do many of the new hospitals built under the private finance initiative have fewer beds than those that they replaced?

Lord Warner: My Lords, since the 1980s—noble Lords will notice that I mention the 1980s—there has been a reduction of about 20 per cent in the number of beds in the NHS. We leave the planning of hospitals in particular localities under the PFI scheme to be worked through by the local health economies to meet their needs. I have no reason to think that that has not been the case. The National Audit Office certainly paid tribute to the highly effective PFI schemes that have been put in place.

Baroness Neuberger: My Lords, given that the noble Lord, Lord Walton, raised the issue of PFI, can the Minister say whether there are adequate break clauses in the PFI contracts for much of this very welcome new hospital building? Can we be certain that those hospitals will not be 30 years out of date, because they are designed for now and five years ago, not for 30 years hence?

Lord Warner: My Lords, the department has put much emphasis on trying to build flexibility into hospital designs. Examples drawn to our attention by the National Audit Office include PFI hospitals that are being delivered on or ahead of time, which contrasts starkly with what happened before. So NHS patients get their new hospitals faster and get the services from them faster.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords—

Lord St John of Fawsley: My Lords, does the Minister agree that if—

Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, people always demand more public spending on hospitals and so on, but when the Government do that, not because of pressure, but because of their own conviction, people then change their tack and condemn the way in which the money is spent. When that matter is answered satisfactorily, they then jump from one to the other. Does the Minister agree that, regardless of how the Government are doing, the critics will continue to criticise in a manner that is in no way constructive? That is the problem with people in this House.

Lord Warner: My Lords, there was much truth in my noble friend's comments. He should take some comfort from the fact that my evidence shows that many local people who have seen the results of the investment and the provision of better health services fully support what the Government are doing. We shall see what happens after the forthcoming election is announced.

Kashmir

Baroness Knight of Collingtree: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What steps they are currently taking to help end the Kashmir dispute.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, we fully support India and Pakistan in their discussions on Kashmir, as part of the composite dialogue process. As a friend of both countries, the United Kingdom Government and, in particular, my right honourable friends the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have stressed our support for the confidence-building measures and the constructive nature of the exchanges under the composite dialogue. We note the recent inter alia agreement on prisoner repatriations and welcome the launch on 28 December of the second round of talks.

Baroness Knight of Collingtree: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the most appalling human rights violations continue in Kashmir day after day? Has she been told, for instance, that, on the night of 20/21 December last, Indian troops barged in to the home of a 70 year-old woman and repeatedly raped her through the night? Does the Minister know that an Indian army major raped a mother and her 10 year-old daughter in Handawara nearby? Is not 60 years enough for the Kashmiris to suffer like this? Could not more be done to try to end such suffering?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, indeed, I am aware of the reports of human rights violations. The particular incident of rape to which the noble Baroness drew our attention took place in the Handawara area of Indian-administered Kashmir last November. The Indian army conducted a court martial. An army officer was cleared of rape but found guilty of misconduct and I understand that the court martial recommended his dismissal from the army.
	It is important to welcome the strategy published by the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs at the end of last year, which included steps to initiate prompt, expeditious and transparent inquiries into human rights abuses and to give further training for the Indian armed forces in this important area. There has been a little improvement, but considerable concern remains about the abuse of human rights.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine: My Lords, we, too, express concerns about ongoing human rights violations—and 60 years is a long time—but we particularly welcome the Government's approach to facilitating the composite dialogue. Does the Minister agree that the wishes of the Kashmiri people must be paramount as this process moves forward? In recognition of genuine concerns over cross-border terrorism, would it not be a good idea if the UN peacekeeping and monitoring forces, which have been in place for some 55 years, had a more active role in patrolling the line of control, so that confidence-building measures can have real teeth?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I acknowledge the points made by the noble Baroness regarding human rights. It is important to note that we regularly raise our concerns on those issues—and not only with the Indian Government because there are issues regarding killings on the Pakistani side, about which President Musharraf himself recently made a statement. So I would not wish your Lordships to think that the problem is all on one side.
	The last time we discussed this matter in your Lordships' House on 9 December, the noble Baroness asked me a similar question about the Kashmiri people. Of course their views need to be taken into account, but since that discussion, civil society has come together in Kathmandu, and these issues and what is happening have been discussed among the Kashmiris. Also, the meeting in Islamabad on 28 December between the foreign secretaries took the issue forward to a considerable extent. That process now holds more promise than when we last discussed this issue.

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, we are all shocked by the abuses and atrocities that my noble friend Lady Knight mentioned, but would the Minister agree, which I am sure she does, that on a broader plane, things are moving forward? Local elections took place yesterday in the Indian part of Kashmir, despite calls for a boycott and some riots. Meetings are taking place this weekend in Bangladesh between the heads of state or foreign ministers of India and Pakistan. There is a kind of peace process and that is a considerable advance on the threat to drop nuclear bombs on each other with which we were dealing only a few months ago. Will the Minister undertake to give maximum support, in so far as we can if we are asked, to this gradual confidence-building process? It seems to me that if we work hard at it, it is an area in which we might get some good news instead of bad.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: Yes, my Lords, I thoroughly endorse what the noble Lord said. Exactly the same points were made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister when he met the head of the Indian Government in September last year and the head of the Pakistani Government in December last year.
	This round of talks, which was launched on 28 December, is very important. It deals with a range of issues, including Kashmir, and builds towards a meeting of foreign secretaries later this year. It involves important confidence-building measures and expert dialogue on the nuclear issue, which the noble Lord raised, on the transport links between the two countries, and on working further on trade issues between the two countries.
	I endorse what the noble Lord said. It is important that, while acknowledging the issues raised by the noble Baroness in her initial Question, we look to positive moves forward on the issue of Kashmir.

Lord Kilclooney: My Lords, now that a new programme to encourage tourists to return to Kashmir has been announced, what travel advice has been given to UK citizens?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I do not have travel advice readily to hand. I acknowledge that it is an important question and I shall ensure that a copy of the current advice is placed in the Library of your Lordships' House. However, I shall do so with the caveat that travel advice changes regularly. Should incidents arise, it is important to ensure that people who are considering travelling to Kashmir do not rely on advice which may be even only a week old. It is very important to keep checking the travel advice.

Licensing Act 2003: Sports Clubs

Lord Clement-Jones: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What consideration they gave to the impact on voluntary sector sport and recreation when deciding to raise the level of fees under the Licensing Act 2003 for sports clubs by 50 per cent more than was originally proposed during the consultation period.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the majority of sports clubs fall within the two lowest fee bands, as set out in the regulations laid before Parliament on Thursday, 20 January—that is, fee bands of rateable value up to £33,000. The increases across all fee bands were justified on the evidence produced during extensive consultation and research about the costs of the licensing regime. We do not believe that the fees will significantly affect the activities of the clubs involved.

Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords, the Minister is aware that sports clubs and organisations were opposed to the original scale of licensing fees set out in the consultation. However, the new charges have caused outrage among those same organisations.
	The way in which the Government are implementing the Licensing Act is questionable in any event, but is it not utterly disproportionate to penalise sports clubs in this way with huge increases in licensing fees which will heavily damage their ability to contribute to sport in their communities?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am aware of the orchestrated campaign on this issue. However, I am also aware that the Government are encouraging local sports substantially through £60 million in the community club development programme and through the 80 per cent mandatory rate relief which was announced in the Local Government Act. The Central Council for Physical Recreation would be well advised to devote more of its attention to ensuring take-up of that mandatory relief, and therefore benefiting local sports clubs, rather than campaigning against licensing charges on which there has been full consultation.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, will the Minister inform the House exactly what we are talking about? What was the original figure and what is the increased figure?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, of the bands to which I am referring, which cover nearly all sports clubs, in band A, the lowest band, we are proposing an application fee of £100 and a £70 annual charge. In band B, the application fee will be £190 and the annual charge £180. In band A, that means a charge of £4 per member to cover the application fee and £2.80 per member to cover the annual charge.

Baroness Billingham: My Lords, will the Minister go further and give the per capita costs for clubs of the increased costs and the licensing? Will he also explain why the fees have to be raised? If they are seen to be punitive for sports clubs, is there an opportunity to look at them again in the future within the guidelines of the Licensing Act?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, we have undertaken extensive negotiations with local authorities and anyone else who wished to express their views to us before reaching this conclusion. The conclusion is that virtually all local authorities will cover their costs but not make a profit out of the licence fees. That is what we undertook to do at the outset.

Aid Projects: Capital Equipment

Lord Naseby: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether they will review the type of project admissible for aid to include capital equipment, particularly construction plant and fishing boats.

Baroness Amos: My Lords, there is no bar on the purchase of large capital items, provided the purchase is made within the framework of a development project. They key prerequisite is always that the purchase will have a significant impact on poverty. Good development practice, rather than any legislative framework, tends to limit capital purchases.

Lord Naseby: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for that Answer, which is good news in principle. She will be aware that the tsunami took place six weeks ago and the Governments of both the Maldives and Sri Lanka have published their needs. Within the framework mentioned by the noble Baroness, when will Her Majesty's Government actually decide to buy fishing boats and to send JCBs? Does she not realise that if you are a fisherman on a devastated island in the Maldives, or on the smashed coast of Sri Lanka, what you need is a new fishing boat and not a framework agreement?

Baroness Amos: My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, for sending me a copy of his report following his visit to the Maldives and Sri Lanka. On the specific points he raised, we will be working through trust funds with respect to the reconstruction and rehabilitation effort. Obviously, we want to bring down the transaction costs for any one government and that tends to be done either through the World Bank or through the regional development banks.
	As regards sending specific fishing boats or JCBs, in Sri Lanka we have asked NGOs to put in proposals to cover for up to a year livelihood support activities in that area and the affected region. The reason is that in the fishing industry, for example, in Sri Lanka, many of the fishermen have died and the people are not eating nearly as much fish because they believe that the fish have been contaminated by dead bodies. We must ensure that people can sustain livelihoods while in the longer term we try to ensure that the right kind of boats, for example, are built to replace those which were lost.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, can we look again at the perimeters and the hindrances which might restrict aid reaching the places where it is most needed, or, ultimately, those who are already poor will become poorer? Does not the Minister agree that in the coastal areas, which have been devastated, we must not prevent the fisher folk resuming their work and allow developers, with an eye on tourism, to come in because that will mean that the poor will become poorer?

Baroness Amos: My Lords, while I understand the sentiments underlying that question, it is important that we work with the people and the governments in those countries on the longer-term reconstruction effort. We should support those people who want to return to fishing and we should support those who want to move into an alternative form of livelihood. That is why, in terms of longer-term support, we await the needs assessment for each country and look at what we can do as part of a co-ordinated effort on reconstruction.

Business of the House: Debates this Day

Baroness Amos: My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That the debate on the Motion in the name of the Lord Hannay of Chiswick set down for today shall be limited to four hours and that in the name of the Lord Northbourne to two hours.—(Baroness Amos.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Children (Contact) and Adoption

Baroness Amos: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That it is expedient that a Joint Committee of Lords and Commons be appointed to consider and report on any draft Children (Contact) and Adoption Bill presented to both Houses by a Minister of the Crown, and that the committee should report on the draft Bill by 26 May 2005.—(Baroness Amos.)
	On Question, Motion agreed to; and a message was ordered to be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith.

Inquiries Bill [HL]

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, I beg to move the Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order:
	Clauses 1 to 44, Schedule 1, Clause 45, Schedule 2, Clause 46, Schedule 3, Clauses 47 to 50.—(Lord Davies of Oldham.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Department for Work and Pensions:Five-year Plan

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. The Statement is as follows:
	"With permission, I should like to make a Statement on the Government's Five Year Strategy, Opportunity and security throughout life. Since 1997, the Government have begun to transform the welfare state from a passive one-size-fits-all system to an active service that tailors help to the individual, enabling people to acquire the skills and confidence to move from welfare to work.
	"When the party opposite was in power, boom and bust twice led to unemployment reaching 3 million and the numbers on incapacity benefit trebling to 2.6 million. By 1997, one in five families had no one in work and one in three children were growing up in poverty.
	"There are now more people in jobs than ever before. Unemployment is at its lowest for 30 years, with long-term youth unemployment 90 per cent lower than in 1997. With almost three-quarters of the working age population in work, our employment rate is the highest of any of the G8 countries.
	"By supporting people in work and providing financial security for those who cannot work, we have lifted 2.1 million children and 1.8 million pensioners out of absolute poverty since 1997. But we can and will go further.
	"Today's strategy sets our course for the next five years. It is a difficult course that will take us beyond concern for the unemployed to help those even further away from the labour market, who have more complex and substantial barriers to overcome. Its goal is genuine inclusion—stamping out the discrimination and disadvantage that prevent people fulfilling their true potential.
	"The backdrop to this strategy is a healthier society where people are living longer. Two years from now, the number of people over state pension age will overtake the number of children. In just over 30 years, the proportion of the population aged 65 and over will increase by 50 per cent while the number of pensioners aged 80 and over will double.
	"If we are to meet the challenges of our ageing society, we cannot afford to squander the skills and contributions of those who can and want to work but remain outside the labour market.
	"This strategy establishes a long-term aspiration of moving towards an employment rate equivalent to 80 per cent of the working-age population. This could involve supporting as many as 1 million people on incapacity benefit into work, as well as an extra 300,000 lone parents. We also envisage 1 million more older workers in the labour force, including many who will choose to work beyond the traditional retirement age.
	"As I have mentioned—and it bears repeating—between 1979 and 1997 the numbers on incapacity benefit trebled. Had this trend continued, there would now be 4 million on incapacity benefit instead of 2.7 million. New claims are down by almost one-third since 1997 and we have even seen the first small fall in the total numbers.
	"People who claim incapacity benefit have too often been told that they should not expect to work again. Yet we know that perhaps a million people claiming IB say that they would like to work if they were given sufficient help and support. Nine out of 10 people coming on to IB expect to get back to work quickly.
	"And there is growing medical evidence that for many conditions like back pain and depression, working is much healthier than being inactive. So failing to help those on incapacity benefit is not only bad for the economy but also bad for incapacity benefit recipients themselves.
	"We already know that active intervention works. We have invested in Jobcentre Plus and the New Deal to give people employment support, regardless of what benefit they happen to be on. The Government's Pathways to Work pilots build on this platform and have achieved startling success, with six times as many people getting back-to-work help and twice as many people recorded as entering jobs compared with the rest of the country.
	"One of the reasons that Pathways to Work is succeeding is that it focuses on what people can rather than on what they cannot do. And while involvement is mandatory only for new claimants, more than 10 per cent of those taking part are existing claimants who asked if they could participate.
	"As my right honourable friend the Chancellor announced in his Pre-Budget Report, the Pathways pilots will soon be extended to cover one-third of the country. Alongside the extension of Pathways, today's strategy sets out the wider changes that are needed. Employers, health professionals and government must all work together more effectively to get people into work and help them to stay there.
	"Employers must create healthier workplaces and play a bigger role in the rehabilitation of their employees. The Health and Safety Executive will trial and develop "Workplace Health Direct", which will provide support for occupational health in small and medium-sized firms. GPs and other health professionals must reinforce the message that work is a route back to health.
	"Against the background of this wider change, and when we have the extra support of Pathways in place, we will implement a radically reformed incapacity benefit so that, like Pathways, it focuses on what people can do rather than on what they cannot. The main purpose of IB is to support those who, through no fault of their own, are restricted in their ability to work because of a health condition, disability or injury.
	"This financial security will always be essential. Society has a responsibility to provide financial support to people who are denied the opportunity to work because of health problems, and to do so for as long as necessary. That is why our reforms are not about cutting or time-limiting benefit.
	"But the current IB system is anomalous. Incapacity benefit classifies those receiving it as incapable of working, even before they have had a formal medical examination. And when they have had the examination—the personal capability assessment (PCA)—those who are entitled get no assessment of their likely future ability to return to work. In other words, it makes no distinction between whether the individual is suffering from terminal cancer or back pain.
	"What is more, there are few incentives in the system to encourage those with more manageable conditions to consider their potential for work. Indeed, the benefit increases with time, creating an incentive to stay on it for longer.
	"Our Five Year Strategy sets out a better model for new claimants of the benefit. It represents the biggest change in benefit for sick and disabled people since Beveridge. Our reforms will offer more support and help than is currently available for those with the most severe health problems and impairments, while ensuring that there are clear rewards for moving into work and that the financial risks of trying out a job are minimised.
	"In the future, there will be an initial holding benefit—at jobseeker's allowance rate—payable until the personal capability assessment is completed, which should be within 12 weeks. This assessment would become the gateway to the new benefits, accompanied by an employment and support assessment which provides a fuller evaluation of potential future work capacity.
	"This personal capability assessment would lead to one of two allowances. The majority would receive a rehabilitation support allowance, which would require claimants to engage in work-focused interviews in return for which they would receive a conditional extra payment. At the interview, claimants will agree an action plan, and fulfilment of this plan would lead to a further conditional payment. Recipients who co-operated fully would get more than the current long-term rate, but any who completely declined to engage would receive only the holding benefit minimum.
	"Those with the most severe health conditions or disabilities would receive a disability and sickness allowance. Far from cutting benefits, these recipients would get more money because they are at most risk of persistent poverty. But we are not writing anyone off, so their engagement in some work-focused interviews would be encouraged, in line with the Pathways to Work programme.
	"So our message is clear: a basic benefit below which no one should fall; a speedy medical assessment linked with an employment and support assessment; increased financial security for the most chronically sick; more money than now for those who take up the extra help on offer; and less money for those who decline to co-operate.
	"As with Pathways, we will develop these reforms in partnership with our stakeholders, including those on the benefit itself. The reforms will need to be shaped on the basis of the evidence of what works, with piloting playing an important role. The timetable for implementation will depend on the continued lessons learnt from Pathways and on the available resources and the timing of any necessary legislation. But our goal is to have the main elements of the new system in place by 2008.
	"These reforms are, of course, only part of the much wider programme at the heart of our strategy for opportunity and security throughout life. At every stage of life, our approach must continue to provide tailored help and support to offer real opportunity for those who can and want to work, while ensuring financial security for those who cannot.
	"We will continue to support families and children to ensure that every child has the best start in life and that parents have more choice about how to balance work and family life. We will support parents in their parenting role by extending rights to paid maternity leave and enabling families to have access to affordable, flexible and high quality childcare. Already, our New Deal for Lone Parents has helped nearly 300,000 lone parents into work and has taken the lone parent employment rate over the 50 per cent Rubicon for the first time. In fact, today I can announce that we have hit a new lone parent employment rate of 55.8 per cent—nearly 56 per cent—a 10 per cent increase since 1997.
	"Today's strategy sets out our intention to go further and pilot a Pathways to Work for lone parents: a more progressive model of active engagement and persuasion for all lone parents on benefit, based on clearer guarantees of advice and support. In line with our overall approach of rights and responsibilities, it will guarantee a clear financial gain from work, guarantee childcare support, and guarantee the ongoing help of trained professional advisers—all in return for a responsibility to engage more intensively with our employment advisers. And for those with children aged 11 or over, we will pilot automatic payment of an activity premium, on top of all existing benefits, conditional on taking up agreed activity to help lone parents move into work.
	"Giving people the choice and opportunity to work for longer will also be crucial. This is not about raising the state pension age, but about helping people to work up to that age and offering better rewards for those who choose to work beyond it.
	"Improved arrangements for state pension deferral will mean that a typical person who delays taking their state pension for five years could receive a lump sum payment of between £20,000 and £30,000, or an increase of 50 per cent to their weekly pension for the rest of their life. Working for longer, together with the increased confidence in saving that will result from the Pension Protection Fund and other measures, will play an important part in helping people to save to meet their retirement aspirations. But, guided by the work of the Pensions Commission, we will meet the long-term pensions challenges of our ageing society. We will set out the principles upon which we will base our pension reforms separately in the near future.
	"In delivering this Five Year Strategy, my department will continue to modernise its service delivery, reducing overheads, streamlining processes and delivering a more efficient organisation. Over the next five years, this Government will build on their employment record to open opportunity for those beyond the traditional definition of unemployment and to move towards a ground-breaking aspiration of an 80 per cent employment rate. We will build on the lessons learnt from our successful Pathways to Work pilots to reform incapacity benefit and, with the support of employers and the medical profession, help and support IB recipients who want to work to do so.
	"We will build on our progress in fighting discrimination, moving to a world where opportunity and security are not dependent on race, disability or ethnic background. We will build on our progress in tackling poverty, halving child poverty by 2010, continuing to lift pensioner income and helping another 300,000 lone parents into work.
	"With this strategy, we will build for the future—a future with opportunity and security throughout life. I commend the Statement to the House".
	My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

Lord Higgins: My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made in another place. I congratulate her on her stamina in reading out such an extremely long document, loaded as it is with highly selective statistics. An important debate is to follow, so I shall try to be as brief as I can.
	The Statement is grandiosely entitled, "The Department for Work and Pensions' Five Year Strategy", which seems to imply that it will be reasonably comprehensive. So one's initial reaction on reading the related document is, "Is that all?". There is nothing at all on many extremely important aspects of the department's work; for example, how it proposes to resolve the present chaos in the Child Support Agency. There is virtually nothing on pensions. There is certainly nothing on how the present crisis in pensions is to be resolved.
	The Government appear to be hiding behind the Turner report and going into an election with a strategy of no content whatever, other than to say, "We must wait and see what Turner says". That will be little consolation to those who in recent years have seen final salary schemes decimated, massive increases in means-testing, and vast complexity in the benefit system so that many people do not understand it and do not apply for benefits. It is not even clear whether the Government's initial statement when they came into office—that their intention was to reverse the ratio of 40 per cent private provision and 60 per cent public provision—is still part of their policy.
	The Statement does make a brief reference to pensions. It says:
	"Improved arrangements for state pension deferral will mean that a typical person who delays taking their state pension for 5 years could receive a lump sum payment of between £20,000 and £30,000, or an increase of 50 per cent to their weekly pension for the rest of their life".
	It does not say whether that is to be means-tested. Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether it will be.
	The Statement also refers to the Pension Protection Fund which we have recently debated in the House. However, it makes no reference at all to the financial assistance scheme, which is now universally regarded as likely to be a bitter disappointment to those whose pension schemes have collapsed because the Government's provision of money is so clearly inadequate.
	The second reaction to the Statement is one of déjà vu. One has heard it all before. It is almost, word for word, the same as the Statement that the Government made soon after coming into office, in 1998. They now say:
	"The current IB system is anomalous".
	What have the Government been doing about it over the past seven years? Well, they did something. The last reform focused on reducing the value of incapacity benefit to new claimants by means-testing. It was no doubt a surprise that they should have done so. Then, however, they modified it somewhat as a result of a vote in your Lordships' House.
	What has happened? If one looks at the Statement, one finds that, if anything, the situation has got worse rather than better. The Secretary of State says that the number of people going on to incapacity benefit is down. Can the Minister confirm that the number of people leaving incapacity benefit is also down, and that the total number of people claiming benefits is now 140,000 higher than it was in 1997? Indeed, I understand that there are now 2.7 million people of working age on incapacity benefit of one kind or another. So can the Minister tell us—this is another question—whether it will apply only to new claimants and not to the 2.7 million people currently on benefit?
	Is not the basic problem that those on incapacity benefit are deterred from finding work because they believe that, if they go to work but find they cannot cope, they will not be able to go back on incapacity benefit at the previous rate? Is that not a massive deterrent to reducing the number of people on incapacity benefit? Do these proposals do nothing to cure that particular point?
	If the proposals do not apply to existing benefit recipients, and as the proposals apparently will not come fully into operation by 2008, when does the Minister expect the numbers to go down?
	Many other questions could be asked on the Statement. We will, no doubt—I hope—have an opportunity to debate it in the future. However, I think that people are entitled to an answer to those specific questions. The Government should not be judged on welfare reform on the basis of today's Statement and the rather pathetic assertions made in it. They should be judged on their record. If that happens, then they will not remain in power.

Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: My Lords, from these Benches we also thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement from another House. The Statement is meant to be about the five-year strategy of the DWP, which I have been able to read to some extent today. In a sense it is almost like the dog that barks—that is, talking about incapacity benefit—and the dog that did not bark— that is, talking about pensions, which noble Lords might think is a pretty important part of the five-year strategy of the DWP.
	I propose to discuss both issues, dealing first with the incapacity benefits problem. Seven years ago Ministers were saying exactly the same things. It reminds me of Mrs Thatcher after she had been in power for about this length of time. She seemed to stand up and say, "This is a problem; what is going to be done about it?" Again, she did not seem to accept responsibility for the fact that a Conservative Government—at that time, or a Labour Government now at this time—had been in power for, one might think, a reasonable period to be judged on results rather than on producing an elegant description of the problem.
	On the specific proposals put forward today, let us focus on the facts. The real cost, allowing for inflation, of incapacity benefit was just under £9 billion when the Government came to power and it is £7 billion today. That is not to say that there are not areas that can be improved, but let us not get this issue out of perspective and say that it is a great problem leading to a crisis in the social security budget. My view, and that from these Benches, is that this is very largely a problem of regional inequalities.
	If your Lordships look in detail at the numbers on IB, you will see that there is an enormous difference between the numbers in the effectively full or over-full capacity labour markets in the south-east, east Anglia and, indeed, the south-west, from the rest of the country, which you cannot possibly explain just by saying that there are perhaps more retired or early retired miners or shipworkers in Wales or the north-east. The fact remains that this is largely a market-related issue. If you have a strong labour market with plenty of jobs for people of all kinds of capacity, then, frankly, the numbers on IB, which to some extent are concealed by employment, are far lower.
	That is a reflection of the fact that this Government, since 1997, have made no serious impact, if any, on regional inequalities in this country, on differential labour markets. There has been no serious attack on regional unemployment levels. This is—I quite accept and I am sure the noble Baroness will tell me this—not just a matter for her department.
	However, in terms of joined-up government what is happening? The most obvious thing is that money is coming forward for knocking down houses in areas in the north and we are talking about massive further development of housing in the south-east, which will only make these regional differentials worse. I must say to the noble Baroness that this is a serious failure of this Government. If she looks at the regional distribution of the IB figures she will see that that is quite clear.
	It is not often in this House that I make friendly remarks about the Conservatives, but I am bound to say that I thought that the honourable Mr David Willetts got the matter about right when he said that this is,
	"classic new Blairism—it sounds tough, it will generate a row, the leftwingers will say it's appalling, but in the real world, it won't help".
	I think that these changes are largely spin. I encourage the noble Baroness, and the Government through her, to focus on the serious underlying reasons why effective unemployment is so much higher in so many parts of our country than it is in the south-east.
	I now turn to the dog that did not bark or barked only very quietly, which is pensions. The full report certainly talks to some extent about the Pension Protection Fund, the Pensions Act, the financial assistance scheme and, in particular, the new proactive Pensions Regulator. The matter is all very fresh in our minds from the detailed discussions that we had in the Committee and Report stages of the Pensions Bill which became the Act. I want to say a few words about how I believe the real test at the moment, which will be very much a test for the new proactive regulator, is whether this protection is a reality for pensioners or a cruel sham.
	I refer to the case of the Allders Pension Fund, which has been widely publicised. It seems to me that on the face of it there is a very clear case. A very strong parent company with a current capitalisation of £450 million on the stock exchange—Minerva Plc is the controlling shareholder of Allders—has a substantial pension fund deficit. That is just the sort of question that we discussed on the Bill, in Grand Committee and on the moral hazard clauses. We were most concerned to ensure that that kind of company in that kind of position should not be able to walk away from its liabilities. We, from these Benches, were very keen to support the Government in taking a firm line on the moral hazard issues. I think that many people in the country will be looking with great interest at whether the new regulator will protect the pensioners of Allders.
	I am bound to say that the parent company has obviously taken very careful legal advice. I have a report here from UBS. It says that in its view it is a very open question indeed on Allders, although its parent company will have to make some contribution. That will be a very practical and immediate test of just the sort of issues we were talking about as regards having a proactive regulator. The whole new system we have set up with the PPF and protecting the PPF is, I think, very much on trial. I just draw that to the noble Baroness's attention and hope that this issue will be very much taken account of and closely looked at in her ministry and by the regulator.
	More generally, we now have the benefit, as I am sure she has, of the initial responses to the Pensions Commission report. The almost unanimous view from the industry is that we must focus on state pension reform and we hope very much that that message is taken on board. We note the remarks about incapacity benefit, and in particular the need to focus on the problems which we hear about from the Secretary of State—he makes warm noises and uses warm words about a citizens pension which we much appreciate from these Benches; clearly, there is nothing about that in practice here. That again will be the test of the next five years for the ministry.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I am at some disadvantage. I have only six minutes to reply to the two Front Benches. So I apologise if I do not have time to answer all the comments made. One comment from both noble Lords, which I think was exactly right, was that the issue facing the country is not unemployment; it is economic inactivity. Those who would like to be part of the labour market, but who are not in the labour market, are IB claimants on the one hand and primarily lone parents on the other.
	No one raised any questions about lone parents. Let me deal first with incapacity benefit and then return to the so-called missing issue of pensions before making a couple of final points. The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, pressed me about the figures for incapacity benefit. New claims—new people coming on to IB—are down by a third. I do not want to make point-scoring remarks about the fact that the number of people claiming IB nearly quadrupled while the noble Lord's party stewarded the country; it went up by almost 400 per cent. We have steadied the total stock numbers, to use an ugly phrase; they have fallen slightly and the number of new claimants has fallen by a third.
	We all accept that once people have been on IB for a year, it will probably take them several years to come off it; once they have been on it for five years, they are likely to stay on it for life. That is the issue that we are seeking to address.
	The numbers will rise, but only nominally—this is why I think that Mr Willetts has genuinely misunderstood the situation—because, as the result of a previous Act covering incapacity benefit and under the influence of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, and many other Cross-Benchers, young people who were then on severe disablement allowance have been recategorised and offered the more generous terms of incapacity benefit. So the rise is partly because of the relabelling of people who are no longer on SDA but IB.
	The second driver of the increase has been that the number of women qualifying with national insurance in their own right has risen by almost 137,000 since 1997, not because women have become more sick but because, instead of claiming income support with a disability premium, they are now classified under IB.
	So although the number of young people and women coming on to IB will rise, that is, so to speak, a relabelling of benefit and the numbers are actually falling. So we have a remarkable record there. However, I accept that lying behind that is the issue of risk.
	The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, asked me what we have done since 1997 for people on incapacity benefit and disability benefit. I shall tell him briefly. First, we introduced the New Deal for Disabled People. Secondly, we introduced working tax credit and disabled tax credit for disabled people so that, after working 16 hours, they could get a generous, or at least an adequate standard of living. We increased and changed the structure behind permitted earnings.
	We introduced linking rules that take account of the issue of risk: that if you come off IB you may not get back on to your higher rate of benefit. We now allow a linking rule that we shall continue to develop so that risk is reduced. Above all, we have introduced the new Pathways, which have been shown to double the rate of entry into work from any other system.
	So we have introduced more initiatives in the seven years that we have been addressing the issue in consultation with disabled people than the previous government did in the previous 18 years. So it would be appropriate—I do not mean generous, but appropriate—for the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, to recognise the huge steps that we have taken on that front.
	Secondly, both noble Lords queried what they called the missing dimension of pensions. We will be producing a paper on the principle of pensions fairly soon. It makes sense to wait for the Turner recommendations, although I suggest that that will not stop all the parties laying out their manifestos for the general election. Again, let me remind the House what we have done. When we came to power in 1997, if you were asked, "Who are the poorest people in this country?", you would have said, "Pensioners". That is no longer the case. Take two people at random, one a pensioner and one not. The pensioner is now no more likely to be in poverty than any other member of the public. That has never been true since 1906; it is under us, and we are proud of it.
	What is more, since 1997, pensioner incomes have risen by 19 per cent, whereas average wages have risen by only 12 per cent. In other words, pensioners, including those on the basic state pension (BSP), have had a real increase in their income over and beyond what has happened to wages. The basic state pension has risen by 7 per cent. Pension credit, introduced by us, is worth, on average, £42. Future pensioners will, I hope, have their problems reduced through the growth of a state second pension which will be worth another £40 a week, especially to women. Others in occupational pensions have not only stakeholder pensions but the greater security offered to final salary schemes under our Pensions Act 2004.
	The noble Lord pressed me on the BSP and whether either the increased pension resulting from staying longer in work or a lump sum would be means tested. It will be treated in exactly the same way as the basic state pension. The noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, would not expect me to comment on Allder's, because it is still negotiating the outcome, but I have no doubt that he will be one of the first to draw the issue to our attention if further action needs to be taken.
	Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, said that incapacity benefit statistics reflected regional inequalities in employment. I do not deny that there is an element of truth in that, but across the country, there are about 600,000 vacancies. The number of people on jobseeker's allowance has dropped dramatically. The number of new claimants moving to IB has fallen by a third. Unemployment has reduced in all regions of the country, and by more in the poorest areas, such as the north-east, the north-west and Wales than in the south-east—obviously, there is greater scope for it to fall there.
	So I hope that I have addressed the noble Lords' questions about IB, pensions and our employment record. During the past eight years we have gone from a system in which we handed out giro cheques to people who were expected to do nothing else for the rest of their lives but to bump along on a low level of benefit with nothing much to which to look forward. We have transformed that culture and will continue to do so.

Lord Rowlands: My Lords, from my experience of the communities I know best, the New Deal has been very successful in beginning to reach out to the large number of economically inactive people in the communities that I once represented after, year in and year out for a decade and a half, watching the numbers going on to incapacity benefit or becoming economically inactive grow and grow. Does she agree that one reason why the New Deal has been successful is that we transformed an old-fashioned unemployment benefit office system into a proactive Jobcentre Plus arrangement? Will she assure us that the jobcentre will remain central to the development of our policies?

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, my noble friend is exactly right. I should have mentioned the integration of the old benefit offices with the employment offices and, as a result, transforming the culture so that everyone who wants to should have the opportunity to work. My noble friend is right: the personal adviser structure that we introduced in Jobcentre Plus has transformed opportunities, especially for disabled people, lone parents and others who have always been marginal to the labour market. They are building on their success.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, can the noble Baroness tell me—the rest of the House may be interested to know—what proportion of people on incapacity benefit she feels could work, whether or not they say that they could, and what proportion of those people she hopes that this measure may catch? All over the country, there are people who see neighbours on incapacity benefit and not working when they themselves are hard-working. They feel that it is unfair that those people can continue on benefit, very likely having their rent paid for them. That seems very unfair. It will be very interesting to know what proportion she is talking about, because this is a very important measure.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, there are 2.7 million people on incapacity benefit. We know that 1 million of them say that they want to work. The noble Baroness is right in certain aspects of what she says. I know that the degree of incapacity is no indicator of degree of ability or willingness to work. For example, someone who is blind, wheelchair-bound, paraplegic or whatever may be committed to holding down a job and give good service. Someone else with what we might regard as relatively minor problems—minor backache, and such like—may feel themselves unable to work.
	I fear that the best predictor of unemployment among people on IB is for how long they have been on IB. Doing this job, I have learnt that if you can intervene in the first year or so after people who want to work become sick and get them back to work, you do so with their good will. After the first year, instead of being anxious to get back to work, too many become anxious to protect their incapacity benefit and they start becoming risk-averse.
	We understand that at least 1 million out of the 2.7 million people on IB think that they could work and want to work. There may be many more, but obviously it may not be realistic for some people who have been on IB for a long time and who have low skills and very poor health to enter work. We will ensure that such people have a decent standard of living.

The Countess of Mar: My Lords, I seek from the Minister a reassurance that I have sought from her on many occasions, both when she was in opposition and since she has been in government. It relates to those who suffer from fluctuating symptoms of illness. One day they can look and perhaps feel quite well while on another they may feel dreadfully ill. The noble Baroness mentioned a formal medical examination. Perhaps she can convey to the doctors at the Department for Work and Pensions, as I have tried for many years to do, that such people do not suffer from psycho-social behavioural problems. The literature increasingly shows that they suffer from real illnesses, the cause of which we do not know. I am referring to sufferers of ME, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and even Gulf War syndrome and organophosphate poisoning.
	There seems a culture among DWP examining doctors of believing that it is all in these people's minds and that they can get up and go to work. Most of them are desperate to go to work and to be better but there is evidence that if they try to go to work, they will set themselves back. The noble Baroness has given me her reassurance previously in Written Answers, but I would like her continued reassurance that such people will be treated as sick, because they are genuinely so.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I am certainly happy again to give the noble Countess the reassurance that she seeks. However, I can go further than she did and say that the fact that an illness is not reflected in physical biology does not mean that those affected by it are not really sick. I regard mental illness as real as physical illness. For example, when I was dealing with war pensions, we were unable always to identify the physical triggers for Gulf War syndrome, but we recognised the legitimacy of the symptoms and awarded the war pensions accordingly.
	The noble Countess is right. When making a personal capability assessment it is difficult to judge people's capacity for work as their condition can fluctuate quite strongly. They may see the assessor on a good day but be more ill a fortnight or two months later. We are working with our doctors to try to address that in a decent and humane way.

Lord Borrie: My Lords, I welcome my noble friend's repetition of the Statement made in the other place. It is extremely timely, and I have no doubt that the pensions Statement to be made in a couple of months' time will be even timelier. The two Statements will provide a most useful basis on which to advance for the next Labour government who will no doubt be elected, if not early this year, later this year.
	A firm basis appears in this Statement. The emphasis is on the strategy of moving people from welfare into work wherever feasible—I leave aside the many cases where it is not feasible—and removing the perverse incentives whereby incapacity benefit increases the longer you are on it, replacing those incentives with the positive incentive of opportunities for work and training where that is feasible.
	Will my noble friend, first, say a few words about the penalties for not taking up work or training opportunities that may be offered? Can she reassure me that they will not have an adverse effect on young members of the family who may be dependent on a parent's earnings or benefit? Secondly, does she agree that the personal capacity assessment will become more important and that more will turn on it? Perhaps she can also say whether, after a period of time, the many borderline cases can be appealed against, or further inquiries made into them, when the facts may have altered for or against the person concerned.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, the noble Lord's two questions related to financial support and appeals. As I understand it, at the moment there is a success rate of about 50 per cent for appeals on personal capability assessments and of about 50 to 60 per cent on DLA assessments and AA, which is a parallel benefit. Appeals of PCAs represent about 10 per cent, and DLA appeals about 4.8 per cent, of the total caseload.
	Regarded in that context, there are only a tiny fraction of appeals against the judgment. Often an appeal occurs three months or perhaps more after the original assessment, and you may be dealing with people whose conditions fluctuate, as the noble Countess, Lady Mar, said. So it is often the case that people's situation will have deteriorated or changed, or that the evidence was incomplete at the original PCA.
	I think that the appeals system is working well. Although we must ensure that the evidence that we submit on appeals is as accurate as possible, we must accept that, with a disability, people's circumstances can change over three months. There may be a perfectly proper, different outcome at appeal from the original assessment, both with IB and with DLA.
	On financial support, my noble friend also is absolutely right. No one who comes on to IB would be worse off as a result of our proposed changes. There will be three types of benefit. The first is the holding benefit, which is awarded for the first three months, until the personal capability assessment is carried out. It is the same level as JSA, which is what people get now. They are exactly the same. Following that, if people went on to rehabilitation support allowance, instead of getting the current £79 a week, they could get £90 a week. If their condition was so serious—for example, a terminal illness—that they could not reasonably go through the rehabilitation route back to work, they could get a disability and sickness allowance worth £100 a week, compared with the current figure of £75. The initial benefit is the same as JSA; the two subsequent benefits, either into work or for longer-term sickness, are more generous than the current level of IB. In other words, they seek to work with the grain of people's condition and their choices, not to punish them in any way.

Lord Addington: My Lords, what work is being done on the interviewing process and the staff carrying out the interviews? In this new approach that is dependent on the interview, the quality of interviewers and their level of knowledge are vital if the system is to work properly. By definition, no two incapacity benefit cases will be the same. Will there be best practice guidelines on the approach to be taken and on when expert groups should be called in from outside to give advice, be they medical or otherwise? No matter how good the intentions, if such a structure and support are not available for interviewers they will miss people and make mistakes.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I need the noble Lord to help me. When he talks about interviews, does he mean those by Jobcentre Plus staff or those by doctors carrying out personal capability assessments?

Lord Addington: My Lords, I refer mostly to the initial interviews at Jobcentres and how help is called in from there. Most help and support is needed at that initial interface.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, we have invested hugely in training. If there is any appeal against the original Jobcentre Plus determination—in other words, that people should stay on JSA—it will be rechecked by a senior decision-maker in that department and the case will then go through for medical evidence. If the noble Lord has any evidence that the process is unsatisfactory, I would be glad to have it.

Baroness O'Cathain: My Lords, how many people are covered by the five-year strategy? It seems to deal solely with people on incapacity benefit and lone parents. The noble Baroness has said that there will be another pensions element, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, said, that really is the tail wagging the dog. If she could answer that, I would have some idea of the numbers involved.
	How many trained professional advisers are going to be required by the Department for Work and Pensions? It seems to be a convoluted process. First, the jobseeker's allowance will be paid to people going off incapacity benefit for 12 weeks while they are evaluated. But they will be evaluated, first, on a medical assessment; secondly, on a personal capability assessment; and thirdly, on an employment support assessment. The Minister is shaking her head. I did not have the benefit of the Statement, which was extremely dense, but I would like to know.
	How many new trained professional advisers will there be and what will be the cost of them?

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, we think that we may need to train to 1,000 additional advisers for rolling out Pathways to Work. Some 2.7 million people are on incapacity benefit. About 900,000 lone parents are on benefit. We have not compiled a specific section on pensions, so the 11 million or so pensioners in the country will be covered subsequently by a separate document. Our strategies for JSA claimants are clearly working. We have not addressed that issue particularly.
	The noble Baroness pressed me on resources more generally, which was one of the thrusts of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Higgins. We have made it very clear that when we introduced Pathways to Work for the current pilots of 10 per cent, additional resources were found through the Pre-Budget Report. We are expecting to roll the scheme out to cover one third of the country and additional resources have been committed in the Pre-Budget Report. We expect, in the general framework, to fund the programme through existing resources, but that will depend on the outcome of the spending review 2006. Of course, we are some way from that.

Lord Lea of Crondall: My Lords, I congratulate the Government on squaring a number of circles at the same time as establishing the long-term aspiration of moving towards an employment rate of 80 per cent, with all the attendant benefits for the country's prosperity, not least for pensioners. Indeed, this is the key to sustainably rising pensions. Will my noble friend confirm one point; namely, that no disabled people will be financially worse off as a result of the Government's proposals?

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Yes, my Lords. I am delighted that my noble friend shares with me an aspiration for 80 per cent employment, which means bringing into the labour market people who have been economically inactive, whether as lone parents or as people suffering from a disability. To use an overworked phrase, it is a very challenging target, but if we can meet it, we would not only mainstream those people in ways that are decent but would do a huge amount towards lifting them out of poverty during their working life and prevent them passporting poverty into their retirement. The best protection against poverty in old age is a decent job when you are of working age. In that sense, the 80 per cent target will not only reduce inequalities and poverty but will help to mainstream people in ways that all of us would want for ourselves.
	As for the point about no disabled person being worse off, that is absolutely right. As I have said, in the first few months, they will be on the same rate as now. For the rest, they will be £15, £20 or £25 a week better off than now. We are offering financial support while trying to remove some of the risk that has conventionally accompanied disabled people's fears about moving into the labour market. We have to address that issue. It is a real issue, as the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, said, which is why issues such as linking rules and permitted earnings will continue to need to be scrutinised.
	{**8**}

Lord Dykes: My Lords, I was called out briefly during the exchanges after the Minister repeated the Statement, so I hope that I am in order in coming back and asking a brief question. As an external consequence of the measures, which are to be welcomed, does the Minister welcome the fact that we will now get a much more accurate representation of the real unemployment figures in the future, which will also help her and other members of the Government in the prosecution of the Freedom of Information Act?

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I am not sure about the connection to the Freedom of Information Act. I am sure that there is a twist there that, in my innocence, I am missing.
	I accept that, for too long—until at least the later 1990s—unemployment benefit was replaced by what was first called invalidity benefit and then became incapacity benefit to conceal long-term unemployment, particularly in areas in which there was and still is high unemployment due to the decline of the heavy industries. We are working with GPs on that, but I emphasise again—the point was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay—that, although I accept that there are different opportunities in different regions, it should not escape us that the number of job vacancies is not that disparate throughout the country.
	There are jobs, particularly for disabled people, who will get a full disabled person's tax credit to top up 16 hours' work a week. There are a lot of jobs and a lot of part-time jobs. Conventionally, they have gone either to women who are lone parents, but they could also go to disabled people, supported by tax credits that mean that they take home a decent income. I hope that the noble Lord will help us to spread the message.

United Nations Reform, and Conflict in Africa

Lord Hannay of Chiswick: rose to call attention to the report to the United Nations by the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, the Millennium Development Goals Review, and to the causes of conflict in Africa; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friends on the Cross Benches for enabling the debate to take place at a moment when the report to Kofi Annan on peace and security is highly topical and at the beginning of a year in which all the subjects covered by the report will be high on the international agenda. At the outset, I declare an interest—albeit a non-pecuniary interest, as the members of the panel were not paid—as a member of the group of 16 that delivered the report to the Secretary-General at the beginning of December.
	The background to the commissioning of the report is reasonably well known. Throughout the Cold War, the UN remained at least partially paralysed. It had no substantial role in the confrontation between the superpowers. Many wars raged between the proxies of those powers, with the UN unable to intervene. With the end of the Cold War, all that changed. Areas that were off-limits became on-limits. Iraq's aggression against Kuwait was reversed, with full UN authority. A number of regional and proxy wars were brought to an end through UN peacekeeping operations. However, no systematic attempt was made to rethink the UN's mission or consider what the main threats to international peace and security were in the post-Cold War world. Despite an attempt in 1982 to undertake a serious rethink of the way ahead, with Boutros Ghali's paper An Agenda for Peace, the UN's main stakeholders opted for muddling through.
	Soon enough, muddling through brought its own nemesis. The proportion of successes to failures dropped sharply. Appalling events such as the Rwanda genocide and the Srebrenica massacre occurred under the noses of UN peacekeepers. Later, the organisation became paralysed in deadlock, first over Kosovo and then over Iraq, even though Security Council resolutions were being flouted.
	There were two main weaknesses. One was a lack of effectiveness. Even when the Security Council voted ambitious if, often, also ambiguous mandates, it failed to provide the resources in men, money and political backing when the going got rough. The other weakness arose from disputes over the use of force under UN authority, which led twice to the UN simply being bypassed. When, in September 2003, Kofi Annan told the General Assembly that the organisation was at a fork in the road and that, in effect, it could no longer afford to go on just muddling through, he was neither criticised nor contradicted. The panel was established to provide the foundation for a fundamental rethink that should have taken place long ago.
	Even since that call, we have seen yet another instance of those twin weaknesses—in Darfur. It was certainly right to look to the African Union for help in that crisis, but it was no good thinking that peacekeepers and human rights monitors could be conjured up out of thin air or sustained by the sort of ad hoc hand-to-mouth help that has so far been provided. Nor could a government who again and again broke the commitments into which they had entered be brought to honour them if the possibility of any coercive measure remained bottled up in a deadlocked Security Council.
	The panel's analysis of the threats that we now face came to two very clear conclusions. First, the threats are completely different from those that we faced during the Cold War and, thus, require completely different responses. Secondly, the threat agenda is not just the narrow one from international terrorism and from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, real though those two threats, and even more so any combination between them, certainly are. It extends also to the phenomenon of state failure and to the issues of poverty, pandemic diseases, organised crime and environmental degradation, which have not in the past been considered a direct part of the peace and security agenda at all.
	The reasoning behind that second conclusion is clear but complex. It rests not only on the fact that in many parts of the world—in Africa and Latin America, for example—a narrow agenda is simply not accepted as representing the main threat, although that in itself has very important implications for the prospects of rallying the worldwide support without which terrorism and proliferation will not be successfully combated.
	It is also because the interconnections between what in the past were misleadingly labelled as "hard" threats and those labelled as "soft" threats are multiple and inseparable. Failed states have provided havens for terrorism and opportunities for genocide. The incidence of state failure and strife is noticeably greater in states with very low GNP per capita. Pandemic disease threatens to destroy the very structure of states. The list goes on. So a broad threat agenda, not a narrow one, is the only approach that makes sense, as is one that does not seek to establish a hierarchy between different threats, but finds ways of addressing them all.
	There is one other conclusion to be drawn from this threat analysis which is particularly relevant to the priorities being established by the Government—quite rightly in my view—for Britain's forthcoming G8 and EU presidencies. Just as it is essential to address poverty, disease and the environment as part of the peace and security agenda, it is equally essential to address the other components of the peace and security agenda—state failure, governance, terrorism and proliferation—as part of the development agenda. One without the other will simply not work, least of all in Africa which is the focus of so much attention.
	When it came to charting the responses to those threats, the panel's approach was rigorously policy-driven. We recognised that institutional changes would be needed, but we were clear that they must be changes designed to fit the institutions to carry out the policies decided by the membership. Too often in the past at the UN, institutional tinkering has been a substitute for hard decisions on policy.
	No policy decisions cause the international community more difficulty than those involving the collective use of force; none has led to deeper divisions. Hence the need to try to clarify and to rationalise those decisions. But let me be very clear at the outset. However necessary it may be for the Security Council from time to time to take such decisions on the use of force, that must always be a last resort. We on the panel spent a great deal more of our time and devoted many more of our recommendations to the comparatively neglected and unsuccessful area of prevention, to, indeed, avoiding the need for the use of force.
	The guidelines that we propose for reaching decisions on the use of force—seriousness of threat, proper purpose, last resort, proportional means, balance of consequences—will we hope be adopted by the Security Council and the General Assembly. They will provide no push-button certainty; decisions will still have to be taken on a case-by-case basis. But they may bring greater predictability and thus some degree of deterrence. The same may be said of our endorsement of the responsibility to protect the individual citizen, a responsibility that falls in the first instance on the citizen's government but which, if that government prove unwilling or unable to exercise it, shifts to the international community acting collectively.
	Nowhere is the need for stronger and more proactive preventive policies clearer than in the case of state failure. States do not usually fail suddenly and unexpectedly. They do so most often in stages, of which there is plenty of often neglected early warning. We have recommended the establishment, under the aegis of the Security Council, but reaching out well beyond its membership, of a peace-building commission which would manage the whole continuum from early warning through prevention to post-conflict peace-building where conflict cannot be avoided. The aim is to harness all the main instruments of international policy—financial, regional, the main donors and troop contributors—to a common cause and to avoid the dislocations, short attention span and policy voids that have so often occurred in the past.
	The UN cannot do everything and it needs to work more effectively with regional organisations, particularly where, as is the case with the African Union, those organisations are active in the field of conflict prevention and peace operations. We are trying, therefore, to breathe life into a hitherto grossly under-utilised section of the UN charter—its Chapter VIII. We have proposed formal agreements between the UN and regional organisations, providing for exchanges on early warning and mediation, and for training and logistical support. We proposed a major programme for capacity building for the African Union. Most importantly of all, we have suggested that where the Security Council asks for or authorises a regional organisation to take on a peace operation, the provision of financial backing should be on assessed contributions from the whole membership.
	The scourge of international terrorism is as real as that of war. The Security Council declared it a threat to peace and security as long ago as its summit in 1992. It is surely long past time to cut through the layers of obfuscation that have so far prevented the clear definition and outlawing of the targeting of civilian non-combatants. We have put forward proposals as to the basis on which that could be done. We have also recommended the adoption of a much wider counter-terrorist strategy that would look beyond coercive measures, necessary though these are, and address the causes of terrorism as well as its symptoms.
	The rules that seek to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are under great stress, particularly those that deal with nuclear and biological weapons. In the latter case of biological weapons, we have underlined the urgency of establishing an intrusive inspection regime, without which failure to prevent proliferation of those weapons is almost certain.
	In the case of nuclear weapons, we have such a regime, but it needs strengthening. The International Atomic Energy Agency's additional protocol allowing snap inspections should become universal. The Proliferation Security Initiative to interdict trade in weapons of mass destruction material also needs to become universal. It is time to call a halt to the construction of new uranium enrichment and reprocessing facilities, while recognising the right of countries with bona fide civil nuclear programmes to have guaranteed access through an International Atomic Energy Agency scheme to enrichment and reprocessing services.
	If I have neglected the parts of our report that addressed the social, economic and environmental threats to security, it is only partly because of pressure of time. It is also because more detailed recommendations on that part of our agenda will soon be put on the table by the Secretary-General when he comes forward with his report on the millennium development goals over the first five years of their operation.
	Our own proposals for increased funds to deal with poverty and disease, for early completion of the Doha development round of trade negotiations and for the engagement of post-Kyoto negotiations on the environment will no doubt be supplemented in that later document.
	How then did we fit the institutional changes needed to those policy prescriptions? The enlargement of the Security Council to make it more representative is long overdue. We put forward two possible ways of doing that, both involving a Security Council of 24 members, neither involving the extension of the veto, one providing for additional permanent members and the other providing for longer-term elective members.
	It is now for the UN membership to decide. It is crucial, however, that they do not allow the inevitable difficulties over reaching such a decision to frustrate or delay decisions on the other aspects of the report. We have made suggestions also for bringing greater focus and relevance to the work of the General Assembly, for making the Economic and Social Council more effective, and for bringing human rights back into the heart of the work of the commission bearing that title, in place of the diplomatic manoeuvring that has come to dominate its proceedings in recent years. We have proposed a number of ideas for strengthening the secretariat and the role of the Secretary-General.
	I hope that I have not bored the House with this effort to set out the rationale and the broad thrust of the panel's main conclusions. I hope too that I have not deterred anyone from studying the report in greater depth. It is worthwhile because not only, dare I say it, is it the most ambitious proposed make-over of the United Nations since its foundation in 1945, it is also an overall approach which needs to be looked at in the round, not subjected to the death of a thousand cuts which has so often been the fate of earlier attempts at UN reform. It is a severely practical and realistic approach. We did not put forward any, what I would call, "blue skies" ideas—no abolition of the veto, no UN rapid reaction force, no Economic and Social Security Council. Some will regret that, but not one of our proposals needs more than a few months to bring it to decision if the will is there.
	So what happens next? Well, that is up to the member states. No panel, however wise, can be a substitute for inter-governmental negotiations and decisions in this most inter-governmental of organisations. Governments will need time to consider the proposals; and meanwhile there will be, I hope, a vigorous public discussion, of which today's debate in this House is one modest part, to enable a better understanding of what is proposed and what is at stake. After that, the negotiations will have to be engaged on a number of different tracks, because different institutions with different decision-making processes are involved. The threads will then need to be drawn together at the time of September's United Nations summit gathering in New York.
	I do not want to be too apocalyptic—that is contrary to all the instincts of the professional diplomat that I once was. Diplomats do not do apocalypses. But I do believe that if this opportunity is fluffed or fudged, the UN risks being increasingly marginalised. That would, I suggest, be disastrous for us all, from the strongest to the weakest, because so many of the threats we face can be countered effectively only by collective action, and collective action organised on a worldwide basis. My hope is that, over the next year, we will begin the building of a new consensus. I beg to move for Papers.

Lord Judd: My Lords, I am certain that the whole House will want to congratulate and thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, not only on the powerful way in which he has put the case to us this afternoon, but also for the very important part he played in the deliberations which have led to such a significant report. The report is important not only for the United Nations, but also for our Government's current highly commendable preoccupations with the tremendous issues regarding Africa.
	At the outset of my remarks I ought to declare my interest as a longstanding vice president of the United Nations Association, and make an apology. I am one of those who believes that noble Lords who participate in debates should, if possible, be present for the whole debate. However, I hope that noble Lords will understand that the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, is meeting upstairs at the moment on some rather topical and crucial issues. Therefore I may not be able to be here the whole time, which I hope will be understood by my colleagues.
	The first point to make is that the United Nations is us. There is a tendency to talk about the United Nations as though it was something separate. When there are weaknesses and shortcomings in the United Nations, it is incumbent on us all in politics to start by looking at ourselves in the mirror. How much importance do we really give to the UN in our deliberations on foreign affairs? How central is the UN to the deliberations of government on foreign policy? How important is the United Nations department within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office?
	Global interdependence is no longer just an idealistic aspiration, it is an inescapable reality. That is equally true in the spheres of economics, environment and global warming, health, conflict and terrorism. The challenge to politics and governments is how we grapple with this reality. If we fail, I believe that we shall betray our children and grandchildren.
	Perhaps a word at this point to our United States cousins is permissible. We may be encountering a potential tragedy. The US is the most powerful nation the world has ever known. I fear that the children and grandchildren of the present generation of American leaders may ask, "But what did you do with your power when you had it? Why did you not commit it to building strong multilateral institutions which are indispensable to humanity as a whole and, indeed, to the United States?". In that context, it is good that the report spells out specific priorities such as the critical urgency of the Kyoto Protocol and the immediate imperative for effective arms control, covering both small arms and nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons, and that it couples that concern with an injunction to powers such as the United States and ourselves to lead by example rather than by what many elsewhere in the world may inevitably see as questionably patronising rhetoric and ultimatums. What we do in respect of our own arsenals will be vital to the credibility of what we say about the potential or developing arsenals of others.
	The report grapples with the definition of "security". It recognises that security has become a much more complex issue than perhaps it was in the past. The IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, along with environmental agencies, are all central to delivering security. Indeed, the issues with which they deal are central to the future stability of humanity. The question to ask, therefore, is how is all this work to be knitted together. I think that I shall join those who often say, "God forbid that the UN should try to run the international financial institutions". I understand that misgiving and share it in many ways, but I believe that the work of the international financial institutions and the environmental agencies has to be made politically accountable to those charged with ensuring global security in the Security Council, otherwise it is a nonsense and denies any understanding of how the concept of security has moved forward.
	Enduring stability and peace cannot be imposed. I am sure that most of us would agree on that. They have painstakingly to be built. Human rights and social justice are their foundation stones. The redistribution of wealth and fairness in trade are essential, but the redistribution of power is indispensable. The dangers we currently face are rooted in an interacting matrix of the sinister, power-hungry and ruthlessly manipulative Bin Ladens of the world, the many millions of deprived and oppressed people in the world, the culturally alienated and all those who feel themselves excluded from the power structures, many of whom are highly articulate and very well educated. The great point about the UN is that it provides a forum in which all the world can be heard, not just parts of it. If we are to get peace and stability right, we have to ensure that the agendas of the international institutions are agendas that are owned by the international community as a whole—not just the agendas of the self-esteemed managers of the world, however enlightened they try to be.
	Credibility for the international rule of law rests on UN authority, especially when action is being taken to enforce it, not as a legal formality but as a demonstrable manifestation of the widest possible global consensus behind that action. That is why some of us were so worried at the time of the Iraq war. I fear that without this international authority and consensus we face a road towards international anarchy.
	The report also attempts to define terrorism. That is interesting because at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg last week we grappled with exactly the same problem. Surely the lessons of the last century and this century have demonstrated that one of the issues of terrorism we must all take seriously is that of state terrorism. Of course we all recoil at the absolute, unacceptable brutality and cruelty of Beslan and of 9/11 in the United States. We are all profoundly disturbed by suicide bombers, although we have to ask why young people allow themselves to be used in this way. What is their sense of hopelessness and desperation that leads them to be caught up in such despicable actions? But children, the frail, the elderly and everyone else caught up in a modern bombing operation, in crossfire, or in the indiscriminate bombardments in Chechnya and Palestine encounter the feeling of terror as well. When we approach the issue of the definition of terrorism, we have to be very careful about credibility of language.
	My final point is simply this. The report refers to the importance of the Secretary-General and the secretariat. That is self-evident and crucial. One of the issues that we have to take seriously is how we select the Secretary-General; how the Secretary-General to undertake these immense responsibilities is found and appointed. I should like to hear more about that in the course of the debate.

Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, I apologise deeply to the House, and particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for having been unintentionally late. I miscalculated my powers of speed. I should also explain that this is a Back-Bench speech. I did not expect to be where I am.
	I was struck by the power, lucidity and honesty of the admirable report, in which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has clearly played a significant part.
	We need the United Nations. It is difficult to imagine a world without the United Nations and the many organisations it has created, but it is too large. Partly because of its size, the United Nations is often ineffective and sometimes corrupt. The reported failures in accountability by the coalition and private sector in Iraq today are disgraceful, but the UN's own internal audit report on the Oil for Food programme reveals an equally deplorable state of affairs. It identifies not only the failure to account for very significant sums but states that,
	"One serious concern should be the under-pricing of oil and the over-pricing of humanitarian goods which both posed a threat to sanctions".
	It attacks the failure to implement previous audit recommendations. Only 11 out of 45 were implemented. Twelve were reported to have been implemented, but they had not.
	The OIOS established 10 years ago does not seem to have been able to control all this. Too many other organisations were involved. One always comes back to that. The audit report demonstrates the extreme complexity and often inefficiency of an organisation which has, over the years, proliferated into an alarmingly complex world of its own, dominated by initials.
	My chief interest, however, lies in the practical problems of peacekeeping and peace-enforcement capabilities referred to in Parts 3 and 4 of the panel's report. It is right to recommend increasing the involvement in decision-making of those who contribute most, both in money and participation in mandated peace operations. It records that the permanent members of the Security Council should pledge themselves to refrain from the use of the veto in cases of genocide and large-scale human rights abuses. Presumably that is what prevented action in Darfur.
	In paragraph 219 the report refers to,
	"The EU decision to establish high readiness, self-sufficient battalions that can reinforce UN missions",
	and, in paragraph 218, to the work of the panel of UN peace operations in 2000—the Brahimi report—in the context of strategic deployment stockpiles.
	Finally, in paragraph 272, it refers to donor countries committing to,
	"a 10-year process of sustained capacity building support within the African Union strategic framework",
	and states that member states should allow the UN to provide equipment support from UN-owned resources to regional operations, and to use the UN peacekeeping budget to finance regional operations and to provide equipment support from UN-owned resources.
	As the EU is also committed to funding and arming the AU's projected African army, and supporting it logistically, it seems likely that the AU secretariat, which intends to be in charge of the African army, will be receiving support from both the EU and the UN. That could lead to some serious mismanagement.
	It is already enough that our soldiers, airmen and sailors—for the other two services will necessarily be involved in any major battle group operation—are to be committed to what could be long operations when they are already wearing three hats: NATO, the EU and, we should not forget, our own national defence and our existing military commitments in Cyprus, the Falklands and Germany. If we are to see the UN budget for operations and for peacekeeping include UN participation in and support for regional operations in Africa—and, no doubt, in other areas should a crisis arise—we shall be looking at serious overstretch. I am more concerned as political correctness will probably require us to accept missions which may be politically virtuous but in practice do nothing to save people in trouble.
	The Brahimi report stated bluntly that the secretariat should check whether a potential troop contributor could meet the requisite training and equipment requirements. If it did not, it should not deploy. It added that troop-contributing countries that cannot meet the terms of their memorandum of understanding should tell the UN and not deploy. It referred to,
	"Soldiers without rifles or with rifles but no helmets—soldiers who had no one who could speak the mission language, who lacked common operating procedures, had differing interpretations of the key elements of command and control, and of the mission rule of engagement, and who might have differing expectations about mission requirements for the use of force".
	It referred also to the totally inadequate size of the back-up staff in the UN headquarters to run operations or even provide simple administration, and the total absence then of training and joint planning for command and control. How has that changed in four years? I hope it has.
	The Brahimi report also foreshadowed the creation of brigades, each of 5,000 troops, to be available within 30 days, which already had a common doctrine, training and arrangements for operational control. This is exactly what the EU has now offered. The panel's report, at paragraph 219, recognises that missions without the troop strengths to resist aggression will invite it. Sierra Leone and the Congo both offer examples of that.
	The panel report also states that,
	"Developed states have particular responsibilities in peacekeeping areas and should do more to transfer their existing force capacities into suitable contingents for peace operations".
	That will be very open-ended.
	I welcome that honest approach but I have three concerns. First, how far has the UN moved since 2000 to provide that necessary headquarters and support staff? Next, as it is clear that the panel agrees with the Brahimi report that what is needed militarily can only or largely come from the developed countries, are we likely to see our brigades committed indefinitely into peacekeeping as well as peace-making? That is a long-term commitment and open-ended. There are only a very few developed countries which have the necessary military capacity and experience and we have already seen in the EU that, if only because most other countries have conscription rather than a professional army and spend nothing on defence, most of them are unlikely to be able to contribute a fully dedicated, experienced body of troops.
	My final concern is that, given the almost entire absence of experienced, trained, professional people in this field at the command level in the UN, it would be a disaster if our troops were to come under UN command as distinct from working beside the UN. That command is only too likely to be severely under strength, inexperienced and to make its decisions for political rather than military reasons. I do not think that we can afford to commit troops to an inadequate system of command for an indefinite period.
	I should have liked to have spoken at this stage about the failure of the UN in regard to Zimbabwe. I will merely say that the report recognises that the General Assembly has become out of touch and the Security Council has not always fulfilled its obligations. I have the quotation but I do not intend to delay the House by looking for it.
	This is an admirable report. It has addressed an extremely important problem very honestly and with great clarity. But I wonder whether the octopus can be controlled.

The Archbishop of Canterbury: My Lords, I, too, welcome the opportunity that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has given the House of debating this admirable and timely document. I must declare an interest of sorts as chair of the panel of advice to the Anglican Communion Observer at the United Nations.
	I wish to begin in another place. I suspect that I am not the only Member of the House to have been deeply moved and challenged by this year's Holocaust memorial commemorations, particularly the event in Westminster Hall last week. Not only were these commemorations a reminder of the lasting cost and the deep tragedy which happens when the international community in dysfunctional mode betrays its responsibility to those most in need, they were also a reminder—a very vivid reminder—of those who frequently bear so disproportionate an amount of the cost of conflict.
	I say this because I have in mind the 60 Holocaust survivors who lit candles during last week's commemoration. Anyone watching them would have realised that at the time of the Holocaust they would all have been children. The degree to which children continue to bear that disproportionate element of the cost of conflict, injustice and horror in our world is one of those factors to which I wish to draw the attention of your Lordships during this afternoon's debate.
	The cost to children of conflict has to do, clearly, with matters such as disrupted education and destroyed infrastructure. It has to do with a heightened risk of disease, and it has to do with orphans, their care and their needs. But the particular issue I want to emphasise is that of the use of child soldiers in conflicts around the world.
	At a recent count, there were some 300,000 child soldiers involved in civil conflicts around the globe. Children are frequently abducted, invariably brutalised and abused in diverse ways. Such children present a uniquely serious challenge for the rehabilitative process within their societies. They are very often regarded as dangerous and feral by their own societies because of the experiences they endured as combatants.
	During the later 1990s, a steady tide flowed in United Nations circles of recognition and statement about this problem. The Office of the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict was created, a decision taken largely in response to heavy pressure from the NGOs most deeply involved in the issue.
	In 1999, the Security Council passed Resolution 1261 on the subject, and in 2000, the General Assembly ratified the optional protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which specified the cost and the problems involved in child soldiering. By 2003, more than 100 signatories had been gained for this optional protocol. The International Criminal Court has recognised its responsibility for dealing with issues around the use of child soldiers.
	However, this has been a sadly ineffectual story. It is one case of that general problem to which earlier speakers have alluded of holding to account those who sign international agreements. The problem of child soldiering is, happily, not primarily about abuse by government, although that happens in certain places, but the uncontrolled activity of rebel forces in many civil conflicts.
	Does the report address this question? In one passage, it addresses it obliquely but significantly. I refer to paragraph 96, which speaks of the need to expedite agreements on the trade in small arms. I was particularly pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Judd, refer to the need for arms control not only in respect of weapons of mass destruction but for small arms as well.
	The ready availability of small or light arms is one of the factors which facilitates child soldiering. That is an obvious point but one that none the less needs underlining. It is therefore a trade which needs particularly intensive monitoring, not only in respect of the arms but of the trade in small arms ammunition. I note with interest that last Friday at the United Nations, the German Government were instrumental in stimulating discussion on possible procedures by which governments might mark and source small arms ammunition, thereby making rather easier the monitoring of this trade.
	There is a United Nations programme in place on this matter. What needs doing to implement it? I take this particular instance as one case in which the structures envisaged in the report open doors which show vistas in urgent need of development.
	I note in passing the way in which the report underlines the significance of regional coalitions in implementing such agreements. My comments on the United Nations programme and its future will show why this might be of such significance.
	In developing a policy which seriously addresses the small arms trade, the small arms ammunition trade and the overall problem of child soldiers and their rehabilitation into society, there are three areas worth considering within the context of the structures the report envisages. The report takes it for granted that there is need for better and longer term liaison between United Nations agencies and not only regional coalitions, important as they are, but also civil society groups, including faith groups. Without that grass-roots support, it is unlikely that policies of rehabilitation in particular can be effectively delivered. I hope that the peace-building commission envisaged by the report will have this very near the top of its agenda.
	Secondly, there is an obvious need for a clear lead from government in the developed countries, including our own, on all the matters on which I have touched so far. Thirdly, there is an agenda around international law to be pursued. I have already mentioned the International Criminal Court; it might intensify or focus the ICC's responsibilities here to envisage a clear and agreed declaration of the use of child soldiers as specifically a war crime.
	There has also been the more controversial proposal recently that the United Nations Security Council should consider establishing an issues-related tribunal which could deal with the question of the criminality of the use of child soldiers at every level. That is an innovation, and a risky one, but arguably justifiable and workable, given the tide of opprobrium towards this practice which has been flowing over the past decade or so and the huge accumulation of data on the matter which have moved into the archives of the United Nations as a result of the work of NGOs.
	This is the kind of work that only the United Nations is capable of undertaking. To undertake it adequately and effectively needs structures such as those proposed in the report, which is a timely and necessary contribution to the eradication of what is undoubtedly the most disgraceful and, sadly, one of the most intractable features of conflict in the world at the moment.

Lord Dykes: My Lords, I express my gratitude, as I am sure other noble Lords will, in following the wise words of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. I agree strongly with virtually all the points he made. I express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, as well. I am very grateful to him, as I am sure other speakers will be, for launching the debate on this very important report. Even if diplomats, such as the noble Lord and others on the panel who were not diplomats but officials and politicians, do not do Apocalypse, maybe they will be entitled to do Operation Utopia. We have reached the stage when that will be important.
	In Part 4 of the report, which is headed:
	"A more effective United Nations for the twenty-first century",
	we are reminded that the United Nations was not originally intended to be such a utopian exercise; it was meant to be a collective security system that worked. The United Nations Charter provided the most powerful states with permanent membership of the Security Council and the veto. In exchange, they were expected to use their power for the common good, and promote and obey international law. Some would say that they were like politicians: I confess readily that one did not pay enough attention to the minutiae and details of the activities of the UN until the shock effect of United States intransigence, when the Iraqi crisis developed in the Security Council. I shared the distress of many people at the way in which the United States reacted to the more restrained attitude of, for example, the French Government, and those in Germany and elsewhere, about what the United States was proposing to do with Iraq, as eventually happened, without United Nations authority.
	So, for all sorts of reasons I have respect for the noble Lord, Lord Hannay—not only for that reason, but over many years. We shared many thoughts together when he was the UK representative in the United Nations before this assignment and a very distinguished ambassador to the European Union. I found on many occasions that I agreed with him.
	I welcome very much the contents, detail and tenor of this report. It is naturally magisterial, which I believe is a very good thing. This is a complicated exercise and needs a lot of attention and detailed investigation and examination. It also has that underlying radical background; it is exquisitely cautious about not going too far, because these are the early days of a transitional stage. We have been going through stage two—if you take stage one as going to the end of the Cold War and stage two going from then to round about now. There is a seemingly general acceptance in all quarters of the urgent need really to get going on a modern reform of the UN and its structures.
	I personally hope that that will mean a greater role for the General Assembly. I agree with the suggestion in the report of shorter agendas, as I believe that the General Assembly has lost its vitality. That is also mentioned in this excellent report. It needs revitalisation and revamping. A lot is at stake in trying to get it right, if the Security Council is to be the primary mechanism in the United Nations for getting decisions launched—particularly urgent decisions, peace-keeping operations and all the rest of the future apparatus—depending on the final outcome of the decisions made about this report, the way in which people deal with it in the UN and elsewhere, and the way in which other international bodies such as the European Union and NATO react to these suggestions.
	It is a matter of making the United Nations more credible, effective and more seemingly and apparently fair to everybody in the world, and not just to a limited collection of the advanced and wealthy nations, which has hitherto been the case, for good or ill. One could say that post-1945, with a different kind of atmosphere in the United States, a lot of good came out of the fact that the United States was the overwhelming power, with probably well over 90 per cent of total output in the advanced western world at that stage, when Europe was absolutely in ruins. One might compare the good that the United States did then to the huge power that it has now, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, and whether that power will be used sensibly in future.
	However, I believe that the Americans have learned some lessons from recent events. The United Nations had to catch up ex post, which is not always a very satisfactory position, to authenticate and certificate the operations in Iraq after the armed conflict had come to the then conclusion—although, as we know, there is an even greater conflict in Iraq now. But there was a possibility of the Americans coming to their senses and agreeing to be respectable and respectful—and I use that adjective deliberately—to members of the international community.
	I share the aspirations expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and other noble Lords, that there is no sin, and no need for us to apologise, if we insist on a proper examination, investigation, scrutiny and specific detailed research into why terrorist campaigns are ever launched. That is just basic international common sense, and does not mean approval of those campaigns. Only a short time ago, it was impossible for us even to refer to that matter without people tut-tutting on a massive scale. The examination of what state terrorism means is increasingly important, too, unless it is going to be stopped by a more powerful United Nations structure and apparatus in future.
	The United Nations must fairly represent the whole world. In a way, it is a bit akin to the achievement of universal franchise in one single country, and all the history of those processes for us in Europe, mostly in the last century and the one before it, rather than more recently. But in the rest of the world now, universal franchise in a different mathematical and structural sense, in the UN and for all the 190 member states, with the recent increase in the number of countries, is essential.
	We have lots of lessons for the Americans and the British, as well as other countries, from Iraq and Iran in recent times, and, looking further back, from Vietnam. I visited that country twice and saw the mistakes that the Americans made there. There is also the crisis in the near east in recent times, and the American overuse of the veto vis-à-vis Israel, for obvious reasons—to protect Israel and ensure that it is a secure country. It was an impressive new country after 1948, which deserved its security and safety. None the less, it does have to become part of the solution to the near east crisis as it is now unfolding. That situation looks much more optimistic.
	The millennium review is also extremely important. For the UK, there is a lesson to be learned. I refer to the wise words of my noble friend Lord Wallace, in the latest Chatham House publication on international affairs. He said that the special relationship no longer exists with the United States, and therefore the reality is that we can help to shape American policy in Britain only if we do so with other countries.
	Armed with all these new thoughts for the future, and an ability to finance properly and support the UN in its modern form, giving a fair and balanced say to everybody—as well as looking very closely at the veto system, which I believe has many flaws and should be substantially changed, although that is referred to only in the margins in the report—we will begin to make progress. It is a difficult uphill road, even now. This report is only the beginning, but at least it is a very strong beginning.

Lord Morris of Aberavon: My Lords, my generation was brought up to believe in the United Nations. The first political speech of any significance that I made was at the time of Suez, when our slogan was, "Law, not war". Against that background, I welcome the enormous work in the report of the high-level panel, and in particular I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, one of its distinguished members, for his work and for today's elucidation.
	There must always be a way forward, otherwise a body, even the UN, will wither on the vine and become less and less relevant. Like our common law, it must adapt to meet today's challenges, which are not the same as those of 1945. We are reminded of the words of Harry Truman at the final plenary session of UNO's founding conference. He said:
	"We all have to recognise—no matter how great our strength—that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please".
	The report claims that the notion that,
	"all States should seek Security Council authorization . . . is not a time honoured principle . . . Our analysis suggests quite the opposite".
	I hope to deal with only one aspect of the report—the use of force. The US and ourselves were right to seek Security Council support for going to war against Iraq. Whatever the legalities of our position, it was politically prudent to seek fresh Security Council approval. It was a matter of regret that it was not obtained. I fear that the report is a little too complacent when it seeks to draw out some advantage or a lesson from that failure, in stating that although the Security Council did not deter war, it provided a clear and principled standard with which to assess the decision to go to war. I have doubts about that.
	I turn to a problem with which I was associated when I was Her Majesty's Attorney-General. The report reminds us that in Kosovo paralysis in the Security Council led NATO to bypass the United Nations. I had to develop and hone a doctrine that had been enunciated in 1991, relating to the Kurds. On the evidence available, another human catastrophe was developing. NATO felt the need to act urgently. Perhaps it is too crude an analogy to compare the situation with having your house burgled, when there is no time to check whether the police authority will deploy its resources.
	NATO had no hope of getting Security Council authorisation for action to avert the overwhelming human catastrophe that we foresaw; by then it would be over and done with. When challenged, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, dealt with the matter on 16 November 1998—and, if I may say so, with respect, correctly. Noble Lords will not be surprised that her views and mine coincided. She said:
	"There is no general doctrine of humanitarian necessity in international law. Cases have nevertheless arisen (as in northern Iraq in 1991) when, in the light of all the circumstances, a limited use of force was justifiable in support of purposes laid down by the Security Council but without the council's express authorisation when that was the only means to avert an immediate and overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe. Such cases would in the nature of things be exceptional and would depend on an objective assessment of the factual circumstances at the time and on the terms of relevant decisions of the Security Council bearing on the situation in question".—[Official Report, 16/11/98; col. WA 140.]
	From the tenor of the report, this is a contested view. The nearest guidance in the report is by analogy of action taken under Article 51 on self-defence, where the threat in question is not imminent but is claimed to be real such as the acquisition of nuclear weapons. The arguments on both sides are set out in paragraph 189. I fear that it would be too much of a strain to use the answer in paragraph 190 as guidance; that is, wait for the Security Council to cover the circumstances which I faced of an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe.
	We believed that time was not on our side in Kosovo. It is in the public domain—not at my behest I assure noble Lords—that for 69 of the 70 days of that war I as Attorney had to approve each and every military target to ensure on the information available that we complied with the Geneva Convention. That I sought to do as best I could.
	The point is made in paragraph 200 of the report, regarding the rejection of non-intervention in internal affairs, that,
	"genocidal acts or other atrocities, such as large-scale violations of international humanitarian law or large-scale ethnic cleansing . . . can properly be considered a threat to international security and as such provoke action by the Security Council".
	However, the report admits in paragraph 202 that as regards disasters in Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo and now Darfur:
	"The Security Council so far has been neither very consistent . . . in dealing with these cases, very often acting too late, too hesitantly or not at all".
	I wish I had the confidence expressed in the report that the emerging norm for intervention is exercisable by the Security Council in all circumstances and, by implication, always and only by the Security Council, and that a future Attorney-General of this country will not have the burden of such cases as I had thrust upon me in my watch.
	Given the emphasis in paragraph 94 on the UN working closely with regional organisations, does it help when the likes of NATO and not a powerful state takes action? Bearing in mind the words I quoted of Harry Truman, whatever the practical problems on the way, we must continue to pursue the ideas of the founding fathers. Because of that I commend the work of the high-level panel although I have touched only on a small portion of its work.

Lord Dahrendorf: My Lords, first, I want to associate myself with those who have congratulated my noble friend Lord Hannay not only on securing this debate but also on his contribution to the report that we are debating. It is a subtle yet clear report that takes us a few steps further in the direction of an international order of law and liberty.
	Given a few more minutes I would have wished to comment on the proposal for a peace-building commission, which I support, and on the need for more emphasis on the strictly humanitarian tasks of the United Nations, although the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury commented on those in a very moving and memorable manner. Instead, I shall concentrate, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, just did, on the critical issue of the challenge of prevention. We have to move beyond Westphalia; that is, beyond the assumption that there cannot be valid grounds for interference in the internal affairs of states.
	In paragraph 203 the report makes an extremely important point:
	"We endorse the emerging norm that there is a collective international responsibility to protect, exercisable by the Security Council authorizing military intervention as a last resort, in the event of genocide and other large-scale killing, ethnic cleansing or serious violations of international humanitarian law which sovereign Governments have proved powerless or unwilling to prevent".
	I am one of those who supported military intervention in Iraq, not primarily because of the external threats issuing from the regime of Saddam Hussein, nor even because of the alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, but because in my view the international community must not tolerate murderous tyrannies. At the time I referred to Germany a year before it started the Second World War as a case in point. Leaving aside for the moment what went wrong in the case of Iraq, it remains a matter of critical interest to create an international system that allows interference, if necessary by force. To an extent we have such a system. Poverty elimination by international action is in fact massive interference.
	In some regions of the world interference beyond Westphalia goes much further. On another occasion in your Lordships' House I have praised the Copenhagen criteria of the European Union. They involve massive interference designed to strengthen democracy, the rule of law and the framework of market economies in accession countries. One day we will perhaps have such criteria for the whole world.
	For the moment, however, we are concerned with the prevention of genocide, large-scale killing and gross violations of human rights. What can the international community do, and how? The report by the high-level panel is quite clear that it should act through the United Nations. Such action includes the use of force as a last resort under certain conditions which are spelt out in paragraph 207 and include recognition of the "balance of consequences". The report asks at paragraph 207:
	"Is there a reasonable chance of the military action being successful in meeting the threat in question, with the consequences of action not likely to be worse than the consequences of inaction"?
	For some of us that has now become the Iraq question. However, more importantly, it is recognised that in some cases what has come to be called "soft power" is not enough. The power of persuasion and even economic sanctions has to be backed up as a last resort by the "hard power" of military force. Even in the case of Iran, the success of European negotiators in persuading that Government to desist from their nuclear programme will ultimately depend not on their charm but on the perceived threat of intervention by the hard power of the United States or perhaps of Israel.
	This takes us to the Achilles' heel of the report as regards prevention by force which is, of course, the Security Council. Somewhere along the line when meeting the challenge of prevention the UN Security Council comes into play. As we know from the somewhat unseemly process preceding the Iraq war, the Security Council is not evidently the guarantor of the principles to which I have alluded.
	One must fear that much of the debate about reform of the Security Council will focus on secondary issues such as the number of its members. There will be no change in the veto powers of the Big Five, nor will there be new alternative routes to legitimise action if decisions in the council are blocked. The report has some sensible suggestions about what the Security Council should do when it comes to decisions,
	"with large-scale life-and-death impact".
	The report states in paragraph 205 that those decisions should be,
	"better made, better substantiated and better communicated".
	This does not alter the fact that the Security Council remains a brittle instrument.
	Accepting this as a fact of life in the world as it is, we are left with alternatives of doubtful effect and limited relevance. I have felt for some time that it would be helpful in terms of international legitimacy if we had something like an OPCD, an organisation for political co-operation and development of the democracies of the world, in analogy to the OECD for market economies. In any case, it seems imperative that the three veto powers that clearly represent a free world sing from the same hymn sheet and vote in unison on critical issues concerning prevention. If in addition their case is "better substantiated and better communicated", it would help. Beyond that, coalitions of the willing will, for some time yet, remain one instrument in the prevention of gross violations of human rights.
	The report that we are debating is a useful step forward, but it also reminds us how far we have yet to go to achieve the hope of a liberal world order.

Lord Patel: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, for securing this debate, and I congratulate him on the excellent report with which he was involved.
	In the time available to me, I will restrict my comments to recommendation 8 of the report, which reads:
	"International donors, in partnership with national authorities and local civil society organisations, should undertake a major new global initiative to rebuild local and national public health systems throughout the developing world".
	I will link this to the millennium development goal 5 targets of reducing maternal mortality by 75 per cent by 2015; for this is one area where there has been little, if any, progress.
	Over 600,000 women a year die in pregnancy or childbirth. A further 20 million to 25 million end up with lifelong serious disability; some 2 million with obstetric fistula alone. If the developing countries were to achieve the millennium development goal 5 targets, countries such as Chad would still be at 75 per cent of the level England was at a century ago; and it has no hope of reaching Japan's current ratio even by the end of this century. The sad fact is that the poor countries of the world are nowhere near achieving the targets. As stated in the recent report Investing in Development, maternal mortality remains shockingly high in every region of the world, reflecting a low priority for women and poor access to care. The best evidence suggests that sub-Saharan Africa, south-east Asia, south Asia and Oceania are unlikely to meet their targets on current trends. Women in those countries have a right to safe pregnancy and childbirth. The solution is political, not new medical science, as recognised in the DfID strategy paper.
	There is progress in countries where there is a political will; Malaysia and Sri Lanka are good examples. There are also some successful projects, such as those run by Columbia University's Averting Maternal Death and Disability Program, financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Much of the failure to make progress in the past five years and beyond has been due to the hitherto failed strategy of programmes of identifying women at risk of complications and death in pregnancy. A development of high-quality healthcare systems at district level is required. We also need to deal with emergencies. We need a system that is adequately financed and staffed with appropriately trained, adequate numbers of healthcare workers who are adequately rewarded; a service that is accessible and benefits rich and poor alike.
	Importantly, the monitoring of the progress of development of such services should be an intrinsic part of the millennium development goal initiative, which currently it is not. The very structure and function of the health system must be considered. Health claims, claims of entitlement to healthcare and enabling conditions are assets of citizenship. Their effective assertion is an indication of how the operation of the health system helps to build a human rights culture and a stronger, more democratic society. In access to health services, wide disparities based on wealth, geographic area, urban or rural, race and other divisions must be eliminated. Health systems should be understood as core social institutions which are indispensable for reducing poverty and advancing the democratic development of human rights.
	To increase equity, policies should strengthen the legitimacy of well-governed states, prevent segmentation of health systems, and enhance the power of the poor and marginalised so that they too can make equal claims to healthcare. Such an effective system is essential for saving the lives not only of women but of newborns and children under five. It is also essential for coping with other major killers in poor countries, including tuberculosis, HIV and malaria. Without such a system, even programmes such as anti-retroviral drug delivery systems will not work. To develop an effective healthcare system at district level, both the developing and developed countries need to address some key policy issues. For the developing countries, human resources are of paramount importance, for without adequate and appropriately trained healthcare providers none of the health-related millennium goals are likely to be achieved. Laws and practices that hinder capacity-building of healthcare workers, including salaries and career development and the use of skills of mid-level providers are all issues that need to be addressed.
	Another issue is the funding of the system. In 2001, the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health determined that a basic package of primary healthcare would cost about 34 dollars per capita per year. In most poor countries of sub-Saharan Africa, health expenditure is in the range of one to 10 dollars per capita. Health funding clearly needs to be increased. To make services accessible, user fees need to be removed, which is a common problem in many countries. Developed countries need to do more by increasing development aid, and recent proposals on this are welcome. There needs to be increased allocation to the health sector, discouraging user fees for basic healthcare services; commitment to long-term investment; and removal of restrictions on the funding of salaries and recurrent costs. There is a need for donor funding to be better co-ordinated and aligned with national health programmes.
	The UK is centre stage for pushing for some of these changes and in setting a new agenda to achieve health-related millennium development goal targets. DfID is well-respected internationally, and in this field it is considered the world's ideas department. I hope that the Government will take this opportunity.

Lord Bramall: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hannay for drawing attention to this UN report. For a military man to concentrate more on strategy and organisation to meet specific challenges and threats in the future makes a welcome respite from the nitty-gritty of arguing ad infinitum about the mismatch between funding and current commitments. To do this, it became incumbent to read this long document, which has been as well and coherently written as is possible with such tricky inter-connected themes that must meet the points of view and susceptibilities over a wide spectrum of opinion.
	The first thing that strikes me about this ambitious attempt is that it appears to be the antithesis of the doctrine set out with such clarity and utmost simplicity by President George W. Bush in his inaugural address. Of course, there are sentiments in common, not least the need for better international control of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons; but the President seemed to imply that about the only thing that really matters in securing a safer word was freedom—whatever that might mean in such a diverse, complicated world. It was, of course, perfectly clear what it meant on that courageously staged polling day in Iraq—and how good it was to see it, although it is not yet clear where that freedom will lead or how much it will provide the antidote to violence.
	We are told that those who aspire to that freedom can rely on American support acting, by implication and some precedent, unilaterally and where necessary using whatever force is required. In contrast, the UN report emphasises shared collective responsibility, with the closest connection between the more obvious threats and the underlying social and economic conditions that prevail in various areas. The inherent weakness with the UN report is that, in recognising the sovereignty of individual states, it is dependent on their good will and funding to put into operation the collective security and other sensible measures that it proposes. That may take a while; meanwhile, they will be heavily dependent on existing alliances for implementation, such as NATO and the European Union, which could operate with a proper mandate outside their borders. Even the very useful criteria for legitimate use of military force—serious and presumably imminent threat, proper purpose, last resort and balance of consequences—would hardly have passed muster for the invasion of Iraq but, after 9/11, would certainly not have deterred the Americans from attacking.
	The weakness and danger of the doctrine expounded by the President is that surely, in the 21st century with the UN and the Security Council firmly established and generally belatedly accepted as the mainspring of international law, no country—unless you believe that might is right—has divine authority. The President described it as a mission from beyond the stars arbitrarily, and circumventing the UN if necessary, to rearrange the pieces on an international scale to meet America's own goals—however worthy, albeit imprecise, those goals may be. Happily, the new American Secretary of State—echoing the previous one, I am sure—mentioned a return to diplomacy. I hope that, in practice, the policy will not turn out to be as disturbing to non-Americans as it first appeared. However, the snag is that if you have too much upfront military force backing up what otherwise would be purely diplomatic heavy breathing, a move towards an unnecessary war may become irreversible.
	I shall revert to the high-level panel and how this country should be able to give its report a fair wind. Our Armed Forces are ideally organised and trained, with our Special Forces able to bring to justice or help host nations to bring to justice those accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. More generally, because of their wide combat experience, they can act as peacekeepers—which of course needs the tacit agreement of both sides involved in the dispute—or even peace enforcers under a UN mandate. The Royal Navy, operating in the same way, can make a major contribution in enforcing sanctions as part of the improved international arrangements for so doing.
	It is undoubtedly important to tackle the causes of terrorism, genocide and interstate war, as well as developing better international co-operation—including sensible control of nuclear deterrents—for countering such things, all with the aim of controlling and avoiding major military conflict if you possibly can. The report says that the best way of achieving that is by working through the UN and obtaining the greatest possible consensus in the various areas. Our contribution of diplomacy and aid—which I hope is dynamic—intelligence, security and the military import of the passing on of expertise through training and advisers and, if necessary, the highly selective use of force would all have a part to play. That is the important lesson that I draw out of the report. All must work to a common strategy in close conjunction with one another, not least in Cabinet, to try to achieve the necessary funding.
	The working in Whitehall may even need to be adjusted, because that co-ordination has let us down in the past. A common strategy is absolutely vital if we are to have a sensible dialogue with the Americans, to speak in Europe to try to induce a sensible common policy and, above all, to support fully the United Nations. Perhaps we need to change our organisation a little. Something more on the lines of the American National Security Committee, to which all departments would report and from which they would get guidance, might suit the bill a bit better.

The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, 13 October was the international day for disaster reduction. On that day, a new board game called "Riskland" was launched by the UN to help young people to respond to natural disasters. It may have been too late for the tsunami, but it could help many young people at risk in the future. Model United Nations in universities are another example of education. I mention education because it shows how far the UN is prepared to go in its duty of care towards our world that it can create one day for disaster reduction, another for children, another for micro-credit, and so on. But if there is no limit on the extent of our concerns, we must not be surprised if resources will not extend to all of them.
	The high level panel has confined itself to the major issues, and so will I, while thanking my noble friend Lord Hannay for this opportunity. He himself appreciates that there are clear limits on the global outreach which even this report proposes. What concerns me is the lack of respect for the UN which is often the consequence of incapacity and failure.
	Paragraph 87 refers to failures in Rwanda and the Balkans, but that section makes no mention, apart from Iraq, of the near east, where for decades the UN has had to act without a proper mandate. The treatment of UNRWA by Israel is a sorry story, showing how for historical reasons one state can occupy and oppress another in breach of successive UN resolutions. Of course, one major power can frustrate even its allies, as we have seen with the road map. The continuous humiliation of Mr Hansen's UN staff at the hands of the Israel Defence Force has shocked the entire aid community. Similarly, blue helmets have been no protection for Palestinian refugees. The world has already forgotten the terrors of Sabra and Chatila. The families there have not, and their conclusion is that the international community has counted for nothing.
	I am surprised that the powder keg in the Middle East, which in many ways led up to 2001, has not been identified by the panel among the great failures. On the other hand, I regard Afghanistan as a qualified success, but it should not be measured by only the US definition of liberty. The US/UK view of democracy does not coincide with that of the United Nations or many of its members, which believe that the war against terrorism has been more about the defence of liberty in the West than the freedom of Afghans or Iraqis. Against that background, and recognising the role of the coalition and NATO's belated reinforcement of ISAF, the UN can boast a real achievement. That is best seen in UNAMA's organisation of the presidential elections with a minimum of casualties, which gave Afghans a genuine sense of peace and even unity, not least during the election itself.
	If the US and the UK had preserved the original international coalition that supported the war against the Taliban and taken a genuinely UN-backed force into Iraq—I take the point about UN legitimacy, but that is different—the subsequent climate leading up to the elections in Iraq last weekend would have been very different. The UN itself and the humanitarian agencies would never have been so identified with the enemy as the Ba'athists have been able to demonstrate. Here again, it was the failure not of the UN but of the so-called coalition that allowed that to happen. Much as I admire the achievements of our forces on the ground, who should have been truly multinational, the political atmosphere was so poisoned by the war of occupation that civilians have suffered disproportionately. Even aid workers with stretchers, as has happened for so long in Gaza and the West Bank, were sometimes seen as legitimate targets.
	This brings me to the section in the report on Chapter 7 and collective security. Paragraph 194 states, rather lamely, that,
	"the Council must be prepared to be much more proactive".
	It adds that states must,
	"not reduce the Council to impotence",
	or,
	"undermine confidence in the UN",
	but,
	"work from within to reform it".
	That is fair enough, but the question is how?
	In my view, to be effective, the council has to move closer, not further away from, its more powerful members. I am all for enlarging the council, whichever model is used, because that will reflect the changed circumstances since 1945—and, of course, I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, about universality. But until there is more shared understanding of the world by all the present permanent members, including the United States, we are not so far away from the end of the Cold War. It would be most unwise to alter the balance of card-carrying members now and that has been recognised by the panel.
	The realpolitik of world order will always be a step ahead—some would say a step behind—the desired international or UN framework and the veto, while it must be periodically reviewed, must reflect that reality. At the same time it is urgent to restore confidence in the UN and to give it the strongest mandate in the field of international development, where it can be most effective—as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Patel. Paragraph 249 sets this out admirably. Whether the issue is HIV/AIDS, immunisation, refugees or emergencies, the designated UN agencies have, on the whole, an excellent reputation with the aid community and we are going through a period where developed nations are becoming increasingly aware of their responsibilities. The UK's DfID and FCO have a clear opportunity to take a lead during the G8 and EU presidencies; although in the war against poverty, the PM and the Chancellor will have much to do just to bring the United States on side.
	Finally, regarding peacekeeping, I return to my first point: that a new peace-building commission must not be tempted into every arena of potential conflict. You have to look only at the scale of the problem in some African countries such as the southern Sudan or Congo. That would be unrealistic and also looks rather bureaucratic. Thankfully, it will still be up to the Security Council to decide on priorities. The European Union will have a powerful and growing influence, but I personally feel that this report has too many expectations of what it calls "the principle troop contributors".
	As the noble Baroness, Lady Park, said, the world's trained armies are already overstretched. I would like to see fewer troops and more civilian monitors. Let the UN membership improve its present performance by all means, but it cannot solve every problem which arises and we should not expect it.

Lord Lea of Crondall: My Lords, I shall begin where the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, began his introduction to this excellent report by pointing out its two main themes—first, security and secondly, economics and poverty—and the connection between the two. I would go further and say that there is a trade-off. In a report on the west Balkans by the European Union Select Committee a couple of years ago, it was very obvious that there was, indeed, a trade-off. Some five billion dollars are spent each year, mainly by European countries, in the west Balkans and some one billion dollars are spent on development. Would it not be nice if they were the other way round? Perhaps it is facile to put it like that, but, in essence, that would be the most desirable solution in a broader context.
	That argument has certain consequences. The aim is to get economic development going and increase the gross national product per head by some 7 per cent per annum. But the arithmetic shows that we cannot reach those world development goals. It is, of course, an ambitious target. Frankly, it will not be reached, but it focuses our mind on what is needed to attempt to reach it. For those people who do not like measuring economic growth per head, because it leads to unsustainability, that issue must be put alongside the need to address the unsustainable population growth in Africa and elsewhere. That is a question which the report probably ducked. We all understand the sensitivities of talking about sexual behaviour, but we cannot achieve a sustainable world with the current African population growth rates—albeit cut back by HIV/AIDS.
	I hope that Her Majesty's Government will give broad support to the report—even at the UN, where they should suggest a two part procedure. First, to get the UN General Assembly to give the report broad support and secondly, to examine the trade-offs in detail. That two-part technique was used in the lead-up to the Earth Summit in Rio, in which I participated, in 1992. It was a condition for its success and the general agreement to get on with the climate change procedures which led up to emissions trading agreements and so on.
	We must pass on the question of the composition of the UN Security Council, which is as difficult a topic as the composition of the House of Lords, and has as many interests that point in opposite directions. I shall leave that thought there. Germany and Brazil will, I guess, be successful candidates, but perhaps I may pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, about the regionalisation of the UN. At the Earth Summit, due to the topic, it was the UN that recognised the EU as the main negotiating partner and, given the growth of the diplomatic service and so on that is envisaged under the European constitutional treaty, there will be more areas where it is the European Union that speaks.
	There is an interesting example of the relationship between the EU and the three putative members of the Security Council—one without the veto, and Britain and France who have it—namely, the process begun by Joschka Fischer, de Villepin and Jack Straw on the question of Iran. We are now calling it the "EU three". That is tabloid journalism, but one can never be sure in the European Union, because they report back to the Council of Ministers and that may be a way of squaring the circle between the nation state and regionalism.
	What is needed economically to achieve the 7 per cent target is an increase in foreign direct investment. Africa has 10 per cent of the world's population and only 1 per cent of foreign direct investment—and it is not growing. I was struck by a remark made by Kofi Annan on that subject. He is not normally a sound bite man, but he said that Africa's problem was, "not too much globalisation, but too little". The more I think about that, the more I think that that was a wise remark and certainly not the heresy that is perceived in such a remark by some people.
	At the moment there is so much diversion of funds in both official aid and in foreign direct investment that money winds up in Switzerland. As someone quipped the other day,
	"Switzerland is not a country which should be the primary recipient of aid".
	Perhaps we should all say, "hear, hear" to that. The sub-committee of the EU Select Committee of which I am a member, along with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, once we have completed our current study of weapons of mass destruction, will carry out a study later this year on European Union and African Union relations, strengthening the peer group review and so on.
	The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said that a mandatory inspection regime for biological weapons would be a step forward. There is a precedent for that in current custom and practice. I ran a World Trade Union study following Chernobyl. We agreed with Hans Blix, who is giving evidence tomorrow to our committee, mandatory safety inspections of RBMK reactors, to which we eventually persuaded the Russians to agree. So one can have many forms of interference in the internal affairs of member States. I have noticed how many contributors today have said that in one form or another.
	In the time available, I want to say a few words on the remarkable Chapter 5 on weapons of mass destruction and non-proliferation. Coming up to the review of the treaty in June this year, I hope that the British Government recognise that at the conference table the majority of nations in the UN will go for that chapter as the default position.
	It is worth mentioning that they criticise current nuclear states for failing to address the question of disarmament, a commitment in the non-proliferation treaty. Pages 39 and 40 of the report indicate the view that we are approaching a point where the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible. Page 41 indicates the belief that it would be valuable if the Security Council explicitly pledged to take collective action in response to a nuclear attack or the threat of such attack on a non-nuclear weapons state.
	I do not believe that this is the Achilles' heel, as the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, said, but I ask Her Majesty's Government to act positively in reply to this debate.

Lord Owen: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hannay and his colleagues deserve our congratulations on the report. If for no other reason, the definition of "terrorism", which is long overdue, is excellent and I hope that it is endorsed by the General Assembly.
	I shall concentrate on what I believe are the deficiencies in the report. A great opportunity was lost in failing to define "humanitarian intervention", very much along the lines expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon. I agreed with every word of his speech. We obtained UN Security Council cover for the much-needed humanitarian intervention to protect the Kurds—and they needed protection right up to the moment Saddam Hussein was toppled—but Kosovo stretched the interpretation of the charter far too much. The elastic was mighty tight and I do not believe that we should be placed in that situation again. An explanation of "intervention" would have been a great help and it is a great sadness that it did not arise.
	Secondly, how on earth it will help the Commission on Human Rights—one of the most discredited entities in the UN at the moment—to have every single member of the UN as a member of the commission, I cannot understand. This is a commission—we are not asked to have a general assembly on human rights. It is right that the members should be experts, but they should speak from countries which have earned their place on the commission. It should be restricted. All members of the Security Council must be on the commission—that is a reality of power—but all other members should be voted on by the Security Council and subject to veto. In that way, we would have a much more effective commission. Then by all means it can make its detailed recommendations and have them discussed by the General Assembly. But the recommendation is a cop-out against what was requested by both Kofi Annan and by the late Sergio Viera de Mello, both of whom had great experience of this issue. It was a most disappointing recommendation.
	On the Security Council membership, it made some sensible suggestions. It was right on there being no expansion of the veto. Five is more than enough, but it is an essential element in getting some realpolitik into the organisation. I hope that if, for instance, the African Union comes up with proposals for rotation to allow it to deal with the problem of Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa all bidding for membership, that will be accepted. I find it impossible to believe that Nigeria, the largest country in Africa and the richest, can be excluded. I understand the fashion which accepts South Africa and Egypt, but I do not believe that it is a realistic representation. The AU has appointed 15 Foreign Ministers to look at the whole question and I hope that they will make sensible proposals.
	I want to deal with the question of how the Security Council can develop more collective coherence and discipline among its members. That is really the mess we got ourselves into over Iraq. There was not that self-discipline, responsibility or the necessary give and take.
	We are seeing that in respect of Darfur and the recommendation, which I believe is right, that the Security Council should use its powers under the Rome Treaty to refer cases to the International Criminal Court. But the Government are coming under great attack for refusing to go along with the European Union and make a decision now on the matter. I believe that the Government are absolutely right. They are a member of the Security Council; they will have to negotiate this text; they will have to compromise; and they are absolutely right not to be mandated by the EU.
	Here we are seeing one of the problems that we will face on the ratification of the EU constitution. Article III 305(12) is in my view impossibly drafted for anyone to interpret it effectively and still retain credible membership of the Security Council. The Government are refusing to be pushed into adopting an EU position. I believe that they want to be able to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court, but there must be negotiations on the text.
	In that, we have been greatly helped by an article in today's Financial Times, by David Schefer, a former US ambassador at large for war crimes issues. He makes it clear that,
	"a resolution could be written to confine the ICC's jurisdiction to Sudanese suspects and territory and a limited period. The resolution could recommend to the General Assembly that any UN finding for the ICC investigation of Darfur should be voluntary. It could also exempt from surrender to the ICC any multinational forces deployed to Darfur by nations not party to the ICC".
	These would be significant movements in the direction of the United States, but what is wrong with that? It happens to be a veto power and a realistic power. Those of us who have said that the way through for the International Criminal Court is to have more references to the Security Council must recognise that that is the kind of negotiation that should take place.
	On the other hand, there is another proposal. It is that the African Union should come together and use the Arusha tribunal for Rwanda. I do not believe that that is a good proposal, but I can understand that it might have attraction for the African Union. It is worried about some of the courts in Europe and there were problems from the International Court on Yugoslavia the further it went from Yugoslavia to the Hague. There were difficulties.
	These are all important issues to be discussed and we must get around the problem. It is not only the United States that has not agreed to the ICC—Russia, China and India have not agreed to it. We must therefore take into the Security Council more of these powers. It will be necessary for Britain, France and Germany, if they come on to the Security Council as permanent members, to make it clear to the EU that we cannot be mandated and be effective members of the Security Council. We must go there and be ready to negotiate and we must develop the concept of the Security Council in its membership—permanent and rotating members—of a collective feeling of people who are trying to lead the world in a responsible way. In that spirit will come the use of force on issues over Iraq and Iran.
	I agree so much with what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf. In my view, changes in the charter are not needed on the use of force. It is a delicate judgment. The basic fact is that the Security Council can do what it wants if it can get agreement—the question is how to get agreement. Here we must get a responsible spread of membership across the world. That is essential. It will probably be a bit too large, but there it be. We must then develop the collective will to help govern the world more coherently and constructively than we have done in the past.

Lord Alton of Liverpool: My Lords, the whole House is indebted to my noble friend Lord Hannay for the clarity which he showed when he introduced the report, "A more secure world: Our shared responsibility", and for the way in which he opened our debate today.
	The high-level panel's report calls for a radical reappraisal of how we deal with conflict. In the case of Africa, this cannot come a day too soon. I want later in my remarks to follow up the comments made by my noble friend Lord Owen just a few moments ago on the referral of events in Darfur to the International Criminal Court.
	Every day in Africa, some 30,000 children die of hunger; 20 per cent of African children do not live past the age of six; and, while many countries stricken by poverty climb towards prosperity, more than half the people in sub-Saharan Africa subsist on less than one dollar a day. Tackling these challenges will be impossible without first stopping the conflict and violence. These issues are inextricably woven together. Our record hitherto in preventing and policing conflict has been lamentable.
	A few weeks ago, I visited a genocide site in Rwanda. More than 58,000 people were butchered at Muramba. International peacekeepers—a point alluded to by my noble friend earlier when he opened the debate—simply looked on. Rwandan officials told me that the peacekeepers later played volleyball on the volleyball court that was built over one of the mass graves. I saw the site where the French raised their national flag while the killings proceeded without impediment.
	During the same period, the UN French diplomats worked with the then Secretary-General, Boutros Ghali, to withhold from the Security Council any information about the genocide. That abject failure to act was subsequently described by President Clinton as,
	"the greatest regret of my presidency".
	Ten years ago, 1 million people died in the Rwandan genocide. Two of the most abused words are perhaps "never again". Too often they become a meaningless slogan. It was hard not to have that bitter thought and legacy in my mind as I went on to Darfur and visited the Democratic Republic of Congo. There, according to the United Nations, in the four years after 1998 more than 3.5 million deaths occurred from the beginning of the war up to 2002.
	Listening earlier to the words of the most reverend Primate, who talked about the use of child soldiers, I recalled Amnesty's point that some 40 per cent of those involved in the militias in the Congo are children. Taken together—3.5 million dead in the Congo; 1 million in Rwanda; 2 million in southern Sudan; a further 70,000 in Darfur; and 1 million in Uganda—these 6 million fatalities must surely constitute deaths on a scale comparable with Europe's Great War.
	In the Congo, the UN belatedly responded with its UN mission for the Congo (MONUC). Not only has it failed to disarm up to 10,000 Interahamwe Rwandan genocidaires, still ravaging the east of the Congo and remaining as a threat to Rwanda itself, but MONUC was severely criticised only a month ago for its own depredations against civilians. Peacekeepers need to be properly trained, well led and disciplined.
	Among its remedies, the high-level panel recommends the creation of a peace-building commission and the greater use of regionally recruited peacekeepers. But, without adequate funding and sustained capacity-building, these regional forces have no chance of success.
	Let us take Darfur as an example. Sending a few hundred African Union soldiers into an area the size of France without proper training or, indeed, without giving them an adequate mandate might salve our conscience but it simply creates an illusion of an international response—an illusion is all that it is. Furthermore, if it fails, it runs the risk of discrediting the African Union—the very organisation that we want to see develop and succeed.
	Meanwhile, in Darfur, the international community continues to dither. And where has that dithering in Darfur left us? Seventy thousand are dead; 700 villages have been razed to the ground; 1.8 million people are displaced; and 2.2 million people are dependent on aid. In a 244-page report published yesterday, the UN says that there were genocidal elements at work and that widespread crimes were committed against humanity, including the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war. Those are not historic events. A report published a few days ago by the BBC describes how:
	"Up to 105 civilians are thought to have died in fresh fighting in Sudan's Darfur region . . . One village was practically destroyed in the violence and more than 9,000 people were displaced, a spokesman told a news conference in Khartoum".
	Of course, these attacks have been aided and abetted from the air by Sudanese government forces, who have armed the Janjaweed. During my own visit in the autumn, I detailed first-hand accounts of this kind of atrocity, and the Minister will recall that I gave her a copy of the report at that time. There were then some 50,000 dead, and the number has now risen to 70,000.
	Yesterday, the UN's report said that civilians were thrown on to fires to burn to death. Others were partially skinned. Girls as young as eight were raped. In Kailek in south Darfur, it said that the commission has heard credible accounts that those captured by the assailants were dragged along the ground by horses and camels from a noose placed around their necks. Witnesses described how a young man's eyes were gouged out. Once blinded, he was forced to run, and then shot dead. The report also confirms attacks by government soldiers and the Janjaweed in which women and children were gang-raped.
	The UN report identified, but withheld from publication, the names of six members of the central government in Khartoum suspected of having committed international crimes against humanity. It went on to identify a further eight local government officials and 14 members of the Janjaweed.
	Today, we need to know three things from Her Majesty's Government. First, will we be using our vote at the Security Council to support the UN panel's recommendation that those responsible for these atrocities should stand trial at the International Criminal Court and to withstand the US proposal for a local tribunal? Although I understand the point made by my noble friend a few moments ago, I do not believe that it would be an adequate substitute. Perhaps we should be urging our American allies at least not to use their veto to prevent a reference to the ICC and to give it a chance.
	Secondly, yesterday the US called for the imposition of oil sanctions against Sudan. It is right to do so and we should support that. We need to know from Her Majesty's Government whether we will, indeed, support that approach.
	Thirdly, for many months many of us have argued about the need for a no-fly zone over Darfur. In a letter to the Prime Minister yesterday signed by Mrs Kinnock MEP, Michael Ancram MP and Sir Menzies Campbell MP, on an all-party basis they called for precisely that.
	Last year in a Chapter 7 resolution, the Security Council demanded the disarming of the Janjaweed. That was supposed to have happened by the end of August but we are still waiting. I entirely agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, said about the high-level panel's document on threats, challenges and change. It is thoughtful and well argued, but I and many others will judge the United Nations by its actions.
	The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was right to avoid being apocalyptic, but he is right also to underline the need for urgency—nowhere more so than in Darfur. On 1 January, the Prime Minister wrote in the Economist that,
	"Darfur remains a catastrophe, and we cannot turn . . . away from it".
	He has shown considerable courage and leadership elsewhere in the world, and I hope that he will do all he can to use our influence in the Security Council to bring this carnage to an end.

Baroness Whitaker: My Lords, we should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for leading several debates on the report so energetically here and elsewhere. It needs to reach a wide audience.
	The high-level panel's interesting recommendations on human rights structure have not been much commented on, but strengthening UN human rights machinery is of cardinal importance to peace and security as part of the early warning system, for conflict arises when the denial of human rights is acute.
	The recommendation that membership of the Human Rights Commission should be 100 per cent of UN membership has been controversial. But surely the report has a point in that all states, particularly malefactors, need to be drawn within and committed to the commission's remit, without endless pinhead discussions about conformity with criteria. I know the excellent High Commissioner, Louise Arbour, wants that.
	But I would add that chairmanship of the session is another matter. Could not that be limited to those who can demonstrate respect for human rights? To have Saudi Arabia, Cuba or Libya as chair is hardly serious. Indonesia's Ambassador to the UN is the current chair.
	What the report proposes is very constructive—a standing expert panel, in effect a considerable strengthening of the independent element, which would counter the pressure of the inevitable geographical rotation and the intergovernmental realpolitik which bedevils UN human rights decisions.
	The report also emphasises that the national head of delegation should be a prominent and experienced human rights figure. Can my noble friend assure me that this is always our primary criterion? I would also add that the members should be able to vote in secret.
	Independent preventive expertise would also be strengthened by uniformly high-quality special rapporteurs, although the report does not go into this; and formal links could well be established between the new—and most welcome—special adviser on genocide to the Secretary-General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and his role should be clearly defined with respect to the preventive operations of the High Commissioner.
	The report's further recommendations, which deepen the involvement of the High Commissioner with the Security Council and the proposed peace-building commission, also drive further the mainstreaming of human rights in the operation of the UN. The last recommendation, eventually to give the Human Rights Commission equal status as a charter body with ECOSOC, to which it currently reports, would return human rights to the original weight, in the words of the report, which it had at the founding of the United Nations.
	All these, together with funding well above the miserly current 2 per cent of the UN budget, would advance human rights as the lever it ought to be to maintain peace and security.
	Permanent sessions, in particular, would allow much more dynamic co-ordination with the separate human rights treaty bodies, including that on the rights of the child. Here I think we can build on the report. The relationship of the treaty bodies and the Human Rights Commission needs to be developed. Unlike the charter bodies, they depend on state ratification. But very many states do ratify them, even the poor performers, and they are, as constituted, powerful disincentives to conflict. Of course, they are flouted. We can all think of places where their implementation would have avoided conflict. The rights of the citizens of Darfur come to mind, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, might agree.
	The treaties oblige a periodic national report, to be defended in front of the treaty committee—as I have done, which was a bracing experience. The period is presently only every five years, which could be shorter, and one suggestion from the treaty bodies themselves is that laggards could face an examination of their implementation of the treaty as a whole. The national report can be accompanied by a paper by NGOs and analysis by country specialists. This is crucial because their observations are independent of governments.
	There is no equivalent of the moderating influence of a parliament at the UN. But there are the treaty committees and, just as the Select Committees can call our government to account, the treaty committees—better resourced, better publicised and cultivating a cult of independence—could dramatically highlight breaches of human rights.
	So we do have, in principle, the framework for signalling early warning of violations which could summon the attention of the Security Council and which could formally be linked to the Security Council through the Office of the High Commissioner.
	There is one other area of human rights where breaches are very conducive to conflict: minority rights. Here considerable strengthening at the centre is necessary. The UN Declaration of Minority Rights has very little machinery: one working group which meets very briefly once a year. I would support the minority rights group's proposal to add more capacity in relation to minorities to the Office of the High Commissioner, again as an independent adviser, and with conflict prevention expertise.
	The UK is in a strong position to press for the implementation of the high-level panel's excellent recommendations on human rights, and for equal weight to be given to strengthening the human rights treaty bodies and the minority rights work, because of our record in both propagating and implementing human rights. Few other countries have the equivalent of the Foreign Office's human rights report. The UK is the third largest contributor, after the US and the EU, to the Office of the High Commissioner, so I hope my noble friend can assure us of support for further work.

Baroness Greengross: My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on securing this wide-ranging debate and for his role in producing the UN report. It highlights the importance of interconnectedness in development—in particular, the interconnection between extreme poverty and terrorism—and declared that a secure future for us all depends on alleviating such poverty. That is why the whole world has a collective responsibility to make sure that the pillars of development—security, equity and human rights—support all people's lives.
	I wish to concentrate on the second of the four core threats identified in the committee's report, economic and social threats, especially in the context of Africa. I thank HelpAge International and declare an interest as one of its board members. Poverty is, of course, associated with civil war and violence. It is the poorest and least able to defend themselves who bear the brunt, and the consequences, of this violence. It is important that we consider how the chronically poor—those who are old, disabled, unemployed and very young—can benefit from action on this collective responsibility.
	One quarter of the poor in the world live in sub-Saharan Africa. They are one in six of the general population, and one in three of the poor are chronically poor. The chronically poor are the majority of the 900 million people who will still be in poverty even if the millennium development goals are met by 2015. The chronically poor have benefited least from economic growth and development, and 100 million of those individuals are older people. Key features of chronic poverty include its duration, the difficulty of getting out of it and its intergenerational transfer. There is a clear need for targeted support in the form of cash and other material transfers, as well as incentives to support integration into the workforce through education and retraining.
	I have spoken in other debates in your Lordships' House about the impact of demography. The developing world's older population is forecast to rise hugely. A concentration on the rights of children, so movingly described by the most reverend Primate, is right, but we must not forget that there can hardly be a child in the world with no family, no parents, grandparents or extended kin.
	It is very old poor women who are attacked and evicted from property in Africa and Asia, often accused of witchcraft. It is older women bringing firewood to camps in Darfur who are raped and beaten and who have no protection, despite international agreements to protect the vulnerable across life's course. Action on the findings of the report must include support to older, as well as to younger, citizens in the poorest communities to help them to deal with these threats. We must not forget women of all ages who are widowed as a result of conflict and who, in many cultures, suffer appallingly.
	Figures show that it is in those countries with high poverty and conflict rates where there is exponential growth in the older population groups. That older population is left to pick up the pieces after the conflict, whether caring for orphaned children or helping to restore civil society.
	Older people everywhere need and have a right to a secure income, food, a home, healthcare, water, sanitation, and legal protection. Globally less than 20 per cent of the older adult population receives any state benefit. Only a handful of developing countries provide a social pension, or state-supported cash transfers to their poorest older people.
	Universal pensions are not especially expensive. They cost between 1 and 3 per cent of GDP according to the latest ILO projections in various countries of Africa. They are an effective investment that will generate economic stability and social cohesion. In middle-income countries such as South Africa, Namibia and Brazil, social pensions target the poor, especially women, redistribute wealth to the poorest families and regenerate local economies. In the Zambian cash transfer to poor families affected by HIV/AIDS, who are mostly older people, the payment is equivalent to one bag of maize a month, and is resulting in improved school attendance and better nutrition for children. DfID costings are that for the small investment of 19 million dollars per annum the poorest 10 per cent of all Zambians, many of whom are over 60, could receive a sort of "state pension" which would transform their lives and that of their families. By contrast, the World Food Programme wants to allocate 100 million dollars to food aid in Zambia next year, which many doubt will be effective or provide sustainable support for the poorest.
	We have heard about the excellent Commission for Africa. It has embraced social protection as a priority concern. Universal cash transfer to the poorest older people and children should be at the heart of the future principles of future aid to Africa, and I hope it recommends this as a practical way forward. I hope also that when it reports it will clearly acknowledge the fact that it is the oldest and youngest—those under 15—which are the fastest growing population groups in Africa.
	Another example of this is HIV/AIDS and infectious diseases. These affect especially, though not exclusively, younger people of reproductive age, leaving older women and men to be breadwinners and care givers to sick and dependent family members. In sub-Saharan Africa, one third of all households are headed by people over 55, of whom 68 per cent take care of one or more children under the age of 15. A study undertaken by the WHO in Zimbabwe in 2002 found that over 80 per cent of orphaned children were cared for by their grandparents. I hope the Minister can reassure me that Her Majesty's Government's HIV fund will support older carers in their essential tasks of supporting young dependants; help is needed for regular income, information about the disease, access to drugs and for emotional support.
	Much good work is happening in Africa. In Tanzania, a broad consultation process in 2004 included older people and HelpAge International in a new cross-cutting issues group on vulnerability. As a result, the new poverty reduction programme aims to target people of all ages and abilities, and contains specific social protection and social inclusion goals to deliver legal rights, tangible health and education benefits and a social pension to 40 per cent of the poorest older people by 2010.
	My final point relates to human rights. It is important that partnerships to achieve poverty reduction in the context of the Government's aid programme and the International Development Act show how we are supporting the progressive realisation of the core human rights obligations of poor countries. We must take a lead in supporting countries to ensure that all their citizens, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity and ability, are enabled to realise their right to education, health and social protection.
	Will the Minister tell me how the Government are progressing on their commitment to human rights and to older people in developing countries, in particular, in the context of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, which focused on the inclusion of older women and men in poverty programmes and HIV responses for example?
	In conclusion, it is obvious that the world, the UN and especially Africa face many challenges. I applaud efforts, especially from our own Government and the Prime Minister, to take these challenges seriously and do more than express warm yet ultimately shallow words.

Lord Cobbold: My Lords, I also wish to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, not only on instigating this debate but also on his part in the creation of this excellent and well-written report on the strengths and weaknesses of the United Nations, with recommendations for reform—or should I say regeneration?
	The report itself was the work of a panel of representatives from 16 countries and demonstrates that it is possible to reach agreement among nations and that the United Nations, for all its problems, is the world's best hope for long-term peace and security. As the report states:
	"The United Nations was never intended to be a utopian exercise. It was meant to be a collective security system that worked".
	In the 60 years since 1945 the world has changed. The threat of war between nations has been reduced and replaced by the threat of disproportionate damage achievable by an individual or a group of terrorists.
	The United Nations has had its successes and its failures, and in the process has lost some of the prestige and certainties of those early years. A review of its role is therefore timely and even overdue. As the report says:
	"What is needed today is nothing less than a new consensus between alliances that are frayed, between wealthy nations and poor, and among peoples mired in mistrust across an apparently widening cultural abyss".
	The report has many important recommendations. However, in the time available I wish to focus on just one crucial area of reform which is both urgent and I hope achievable, and indeed which seems to me to be an essential prerequisite for the longer-term achievement of many of the report's other recommendations. I refer to reform of the Security Council, which has been mentioned already by a number of speakers this afternoon. As the report says:
	"The task is not to find alternatives to the Security Council as a source of authority but to make the Council work better than it has".
	The Security Council was designed to enable the world body to act decisively. As the report says:
	"It was created to be not just a representative but a responsible body, one that had the capacity for decisive action".
	The report continues that, with the passage of time,
	"the threats and challenges to international peace and security have changed, as has the distribution of power among members. But the Security Council has been slow to change".
	We have heard today from several noble Lords about the Security Council's failures of recent years. To be effective the Security Council must command universal respect, including from those committed to the path of terror.
	Although unanimously agreed on the need for reform, it is significant that Security Council reform was the one area in the whole of the report on which the panel was unable to reach unanimity on the detail. Two alternative models for a revised council are put forward. They vary as to the number, type and geographical distribution of seats recommended. It is clear that agreement as between these two models, or indeed on a variation of either, will require serious and politically sensitive debate among the membership and may involve some modification of the existing veto arrangements.
	I hope that national governments will rise to the challenge. This important report must not be allowed to be filed away and forgotten. The detailed arrangements for the reformed Security Council must be negotiated and agreed without delay. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us this afternoon that reform of the Security Council, together with implementation of the other valuable recommendations in the report, will be treated as a government priority in the coming months, particularly in the context of the Government's presidency of the G8 and of the EU.

Lord Desai: My Lords, I echo the praise given by other noble Lords to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for the report and for his lucid introduction.
	I immediately pass on to making criticisms rather than give any more praise. I think that while the United Nations is a good idea it is an abysmal reality. Unless we face up to the fact that it has problems, we will not advance. One problem for any high-level panel with people from government on it is that it is always restrained from calling a spade a spade. You cannot actually name the culprits who cause the major problems. When on a committee you have members of two nations who recently defied the doctrine on nuclear arms—India and Pakistan—I do not know how much credence you can give to a committee which says that nuclear proliferation is a bad thing. Okay, it is a bad thing, so how are you going to prevent it?
	The UN faces three deficits. The first is a democratic deficit. I shall not say very much about that because I think that the General Assembly is an inadequate body and that it should contain some people's representation. I shall say no more about that.
	There is a legitimacy deficit, which is the most serious deficit. That is that the United Nations members have routinely violated the UN charter. The Security Council members—even the permanent members—have themselves indulged in actions that, if they were not veto powers, would have been condemned by the United Nations.
	I take my stand with the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf. Like him, I supported the Iraq war and thought that the behaviour of some Security Council members in not allowing the implementation of a United Nations Security Council resolution was appalling. Had we gone down that path, we would not have had elections in Iraq last Sunday. We would have had still more mass graves all the time, while people mouthed pieties about how we should have more inspectors and a longer time for inspection for weapons of mass destruction. Like the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, I am on record as saying that in Iraq I was worried not about WMD or Iraq's threat to us but the fact that Saddam Hussein was the enemy of his own people.
	There are two sorts of failed states. The first is where authority does not exist, such as occurred in Somalia. The other is where authority exists and is very powerful but is completely destructive of its people's rights. The United Nations has failed to handle either of those state failures. It cannot take a stand firmly enough to prevent human rights violations by a government. It must dither and delay and rub its hands in dismay. It is only when it is far too late, if at all, that the international community has acted. When it has acted, as in the cases of Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, the United Nations has often been the slowest member in the brigade defending human rights.
	So we cannot just say that it is a great thing that we are more multilateral. Because of the respect that it gives to sovereignty of nation states, the United Nations has a fundamental defect in that it will not be able to react as rapidly as it can. Many members of the United Nations think of legitimacy narrowly in terms of whether the Security Council has a representative character. The whole debate about the Security Council and expansion of its membership has to do with that sort of urge. I have been in India for a month and you would have thought that there was no other problem with the United Nations than that India is not a member of the Security Council. But if India is to be a member, it wants veto power. Because it does not want to be treated as a second-rate country, it wants veto power.
	I have said to your Lordships before that we ought to have qualified majority voting. That would be a much better way to run the Security Council than we have right now. My small experience of the United Nations is through a peripheral organisation in a very minor capacity, but I have witnessed enormous hypocrisy about human rights. As part of the UNDP human development report, many years ago, I was part of constructing a human rights index. We ranked countries. Although everyone was very encouraging to us when we explained our methodology, when the actual ranking was issued, we were prevented from publishing. We were told that only regional averages of the human rights index could be published, making it totally and utterly meaningless. Then it was said not only that our results were methodologically flawed but that the UNDP had no mandate in human rights.
	That is how the UN approaches its problems: by procedural legalities ignoring facts on the ground. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, graphically described how the failure in Rwanda was shocking to everyone concerned. I believe that there will be more failures. Although in the economic sphere, we have given up the notion of economic sovereignty of a country, we somehow still insist on it in the political sphere. The World Trade Organisation does not admit countries that do not follow certain practices, dismantle certain barriers and create a market. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, said, why can we not have conditions of membership and expel countries from the United Nations? What is the problem? If you cannot expel anyone, the United Nations will always lack legitimacy.
	I shall talk for a minute about the efficiency deficit. Appointments in the United Nations from the bottom up to the Secretary-General are not made on merit but on the basis of "Buggins' turn". Even concerning recommendations for the Human Rights Commission, the high-level panel says that there should be three experts from each region. Why? Why not have 15 experts from one or two countries? Why not pick the best people, not those who make us think that we are somehow represented? The issue is quality. That may make us feel good, but it creates an organisation that fails people. It is time to think and perhaps the high-level panel will exert some force in the matter. I therefore welcome it.

Viscount Craigavon: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for giving some of us the opportunity to discuss the millennium development goals. That is particularly timely in the context of their official five-year review later this year by the United Nations and also of the excellent recent publication and presentation to Mr Kofi Annan of the report entitled Investing in Development, by Jeffrey Sachs, along with many associated taskforce reports, all focusing on the millennium development goals (MDGs). The subtitle of that document, to which I shall refer more than once is, A practical plan to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
	In the development debate a week ago in this House, the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, who I am pleased to see has been sitting here throughout our debate along with the Minister, told us that "in a few weeks" the Government would be giving their current assessment of the millennium development goals, presumably in the light of Jeffrey Sachs's report. I should like to talk about one particular aspect of MDGs: reproductive health. In my brief contribution to this timed debate, I shall mostly use the phrase reproductive health as a shorthand for the longer expression, sexual and reproductive health and rights.
	As those who have followed this debate during recent years will know, many of us have pointed out how much of the MDGs can be delivered only if the process is supported and underpinned by the real and explicit help of reproductive health. Many of us have regretted that the omission from the MDGs of the agreed goal of the 1994 Cairo conference—that of universal access to reproductive health services—was serious and costly, in particular, in poverty reduction and women's health, as well as HIV/AIDS. That conference established the accepted use of the words "reproductive health".
	There had been talk of now trying to advocate a ninth MDG to focus particularly on reproductive health, but I believe that that is no longer the best route, nor a practical aim. Instead, the review of MDGs is now the opportunity to modify the existing ones in order explicitly to incorporate sexual and reproductive health goals and indicators and to adopt a universal access indicator, which can be used as a vital measure of progress in the field.
	The refreshing urgency of the Jeffrey Sachs report, Investing in Development, makes numerous mentions of reproductive health as being part, but only part, of what is required. In his desire to make things happen, Jeffrey Sachs lists a number of what he calls quick wins. On page 26, he says some elements of his package could be implemented immediately and,
	"see breathtaking results within three or fewer years".
	He says that, with adequate resources, one of those quick wins includes:
	"Expanding access to Sexual and Reproductive Health information and services, including family planning and contraceptive information and services, and close the existing funding gaps for supplies and logistics".
	The report goes on to say that those quick wins are the ones with very high potential short-term impact that can be immediately implemented. It then says:
	"The world cannot afford to let another year go by without investing in these simple and proven strategies".
	I am mentioning this report in some detail because it is to be the key basis on which revisions of the MDGs should emerge in September, and I hope that our Government can take that positively into account in their response to this report in the next few weeks.
	I hope that we can achieve the integration of reproductive health into many parts of the MDGs, in particular the assertion of the aim of universal access to reproductive health. Later in the report, we are told:
	"The current situation shows how devastating the neglect of sexual and reproductive health can be. The differences in reproductive health—between rich and poor and within and between countries—are larger than in many areas of healthcare . . . Sexual and reproductive health services should be integrated into a strengthened health system".
	Along with the main report, there are 13 task-force reports, all of which, I understand, at least mention reproductive health. Those reports are on subjects such as gender, HIV/AIDS, the environment, water and so on. In some cases, a major consideration is unsustainable population growth.
	As I hope I have made clear, reproductive health by itself is not a sufficient answer to all those urgent problems. But it is an essential integrated component of so many aspects of MDGs and its role must now be written more explicitly into the revision of MDGs now under way, in particular the entrenching of the aim of universal access to reproductive health.
	In promoting this, I hope that our Government will continue to take a lead in this field. We are entitled to be encouraged by the record of DfID under the present Minister, Mr Hilary Benn. In the coming months of the MDG review, I hope that we can all build on the excellent work of Jeffrey Sachs to take action really to try to achieve those important goals.

Lord Brett: My Lords, I, too, express my appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for this debate and the valuable report from the high-level panel. Like other noble Lords, I shall concentrate on the millennium development goals, particularly one part of them. I declare an interest as the director of the International Labour Organisation for the United Kingdom and Ireland and a member of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation. It is on that experience that I base my contribution today.
	Both the high-level panel and the World Commission identified the MDGs as central. The high-level panel also identifies poverty as part of that broader security threat. I wish to identify myself with the very powerful contributions of the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in respect of Africa, in particular.
	I shall deal with one word: employment; it is the key to many of the answers that we need to find. The statistics are known to most people but not everybody. Half the world lives on roughly two dollars a day and a fifth lives on a dollar a day. More apposite is that half the world's unemployed are between the ages of 15 and 24. In both security and poverty terms, that is a major threat. It is a threat to political stability.
	We heard movingly from the most reverend Primate and others about child soldiers. It is chilling to meet 11 year-olds in Uganda who cannot read and write but can strip an AK-47 better than the SAS could, and can kill with impunity—not because they want to but because they have been programmed. That is the kind of 11 year-old who becomes an unemployed 15 year-old. It is why unemployment in that area is a scourge that must be tackled. Those young people are also candidates for political extremism or fundamentalism; they are likely to be recruited into criminality; and they are certainly an aid to corruption. As part of the problem of unemployment, they also undermine good governance.
	Why do I refer to the MDGs? There is not a word in the MDGs about employment. It is the dog that did not bark, to quote a noble Lord from the Liberal Democrat Benches speaking in the debate on the Statement. When the World Commission travelled the world finding out people's concerns on globalisation and poverty, the key word was jobs. Employment and self-employment are how people get out of poverty.
	We also discovered, as will the millennium development review, that there continues to be incoherence within the UN system. The international financial institutions (IFIs) talk about policies of investment and growth but nobody carries that through to include a policy on jobs. We need to bring that into the centre of policy-making. That was a recommendation of the World Commission.
	I was very pleased to see in the General Assembly towards the end of last year the endorsement of the report and its remittance to the review of MDGs, supported by some 74 countries and sponsored by the presidencies of the World Commission, Tanzania and Finland. I was pleased to see the European Union and in particular Her Majesty's Government as part of that sponsorship.
	I do not think that we seek a ninth MDG. We want employment to be embedded in poverty eradication. There seems to be a belief in some economic circles that if you create the right macro-economic circumstances and trade systems, lo and behold, you will create jobs. However, we have seen in the past decade how you can have investment growth and jobless growth.
	I seek the Minister's assurance that the United Kingdom, having endorsed the World Commission report and been instrumental in putting it in the review of the millennium development goals, will take forward the requirement to look not just at poverty and how it is undermined as regards assistance—I pay tribute to DfID for much of the work that it is doing—but how we place central to that the creation of employment and self-employment as a dignified way for people to get out of poverty.

Baroness Hooper: My Lords, in a probable general election year, it is inevitable that home affairs will tend to take priority both in the other place and in general public debate. Your Lordships' House, therefore, has an important role to play in raising its eyes and thoughts to the wider international horizon. I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for giving us the opportunity to consider and discuss this topical report.
	The United Nations has a more vital role than ever in today's new world. The fact that it has survived at all throughout the turbulent years since 1945, with only minor tinkering and developments, is a tribute to the determined and able individuals who have served the United Nations in every capacity, as well as an acknowledgement of the need for a collective approach in a world of instant communication and with a global focus on all sorts of events, whether war, peace or poverty, which have been touchingly referred to in this debate, and affecting all parts of the world, whether Africa, the Middle East or the Americas.
	The increase in the number of members of the United Nations in the post-Cold War world, and the growth in regional political and trade organisations throughout the world—I refer particularly to the European Union but also to Africa and other countries—do not mean that the United Nations has become unwieldy and irrelevant. Nevertheless, as clearly explained by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, a makeover is needed that will provide an overall approach and practical and realistic recommendations.
	I therefore welcome the report, like so many noble Lords, and hope and trust that it will be considered as thoroughly and rapidly as it deserves by all governments, particularly our own, and, in the light of recent history, the United States. I feel sure that the Minister will be able to reassure us that the Government will use their best endeavours with their best of friends—the United States Administration—to ensure that the report is acted upon and not left to gather dust on some shelf.
	Security matters have been well covered in this debate, and I do not consider myself an expert in that field. I would make only two points. First, with respect to responses to aggression and to the control of arms, I agree that a collective approach is the best way forward. The report's suggestions on streamlining that approach are to be welcomed. Secondly, Part 4 of the report outlines the regional approach to security and ways in which the regional organisations which have developed over the years may be strengthened. Those provisions, too, are to be welcomed.
	I would like to raise two other, separate issues. The first is water. If war and the causes of war are matters for the Security Council and if, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, the panel had taken a long time to look at prevention, surely it behoves the United Nations to take a lead in dealing with the increasing threat of a total breakdown in water resources, with all the consequences that that will have for the poorest of the poor. Just as oil interests have led to conflict in the past, so too could water scarcity. I know that Boutros Boutros Ghali has pointed to that threat on a number of occasions. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that the Government will press forward with measures to prevent a lack of water.
	The second issue relates to the ongoing debate about the so-called democratisation of the United Nations, to which the noble Lord, Lord Desai, referred. Ideas which have been put forward in the past include using the Inter-Parliamentary Union for such a purpose. The European Parliament recently passed a resolution on relations between the European Union and the United Nations and proposed, among other things, that an effort be made to launch, with regional and world parliamentary assemblies, a network of parliamentarians to discuss major political issues related to United Nations activity and all the challenges that the UN faces.
	This seems to be a more sensible way forward than inventing something new, but, as far as I can see, the report remains silent on this issue, and I wonder whether the panel even considered it. The United Nations, I understand, cannot do everything or be everything, but in our making of a more effective United Nations for the 21st century, the democratic deficit should surely be remedied.

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton: My Lords, 50 years ago, I was working in the third room of the United Nations department in the Foreign Office. My first task in that august building was to try to brief the British delegation to the Ninth Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations on what it should say to a special committee that had been set up to try to define "aggression". I am delighted to read in this report and hear in the debate that the definition of "terrorism" has been more speedily resolved than was that matter.
	At that time, it still seemed possible to have an idealistic view of the United Nations and its future. Those words of Tennyson in Locksley Hall about the "Parliament of man" and the "Federation of the world" did not strike an all together incoherent note. We all realised that preventing those ideals being achieved was the fact that the Soviet Union had determined to use the United Nations like all other institutions or all other international mechanisms as a means of promoting international communism.
	Without recalling past controversies, it is worth while to remember that, in 1946, the United States had proposed in the UN the complete internationalisation and control of all manifestations of nuclear energy and production. I suppose that realists would now say that that could never have worked, but, as a matter of fact, the entire scientific community in the West and all enlightened governments, including our own, supported that. I have the feeling that that rejection by the Soviet Union of the Baruch plan in 1946 was what AJP Taylor would have said was a turning point in world history around which world history failed to turn.
	It would have been better if paragraphs 107–112 of the report, which is the section on nuclear matters, had been prefaced by some reference to that and also to the long years of UN debates and discussions on disarmament. The absence of a historical context is the chief weakness of the report; for example, in paragraph 146, Al'Qaeda is referred to as the first international terrorist organisation. What of the anarchist movement at the beginning of the 20th century? What indeed of the organisation of terrorists and guerrillas, financed by the Soviet Union and organised by Cuba, in the 1960s and 1970s?
	Paragraph 203 calls for action if there is a humanitarian breakdown in a particular state. That section should have recalled that Theodore Roosevelt, in the corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1905, said that the United States had a duty to intervene in Latin America if there were some instance of brutal wrongdoing.
	Finally, it should be pointed out that, in the consideration of terror, we should realise that poverty or misery is not always, nor even as a rule, the prime motor of that reaction. ETA, for example—the Basque terrorist movement—is established in the richest part of Spain. I do not think that poverty has been a motor of the IRA in the past 25 years. In Al'Qaeda, all classes seem to participate. As I have said in this House previously, terrorists are usually men or women who are inspired or possessed by some common, semi-religious cause, even if perhaps poverty may have played a part at some stage in the formulation of that cause.
	The way in which the United Nations was shaped in 1944–45 was the product of much interesting and intelligent discussion both inside and outside governments. That was quite lacking after 1990 at the end of the Cold War. The reason for that lack of speculation and discussion was simple: we had had 40 years of the Cold War and all statesmen and all people involved in international politics were much more exhausted than they seemed to be. That was a pity, because instead of intelligent suggestions for what the new world order should be like, as indeed this report constitutes, we had nothing more subtle than the assertion by the United States of its capacity to act as it wished. Indeed, there were times in 2003 when the United States spokesmen talked as if there was no need for them to consider any other authority at all.
	Despite the comments of my noble and gallant friend Lord Bramall to the contrary, I detect a considerable modification in the position of the United States, in acts anyway—for example, the likely role of the UN in working out the new constitution in Iraq—if not in words.
	The report makes several very useful proposals for institutional change, to which my noble friend Lord Owen referred. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, made some interesting comments, particularly in relation to appointments within the organisation on merit. I have no doubt that realists will reject this idea, but could we not in some way connive to arrange for representatives of opposition parties to become involved institutionally in the United Nations?
	The noble Lord, Lord Desai, touched on that. To realists, it may seem impossible. But we should not forget that one innovation in the European Community was that some countries would have a member of the opposition as a commissioner. My noble friend Lord Dahrendorf benefited from that custom. That idea would assist the present President of the United States' basically positive desire—echoing President Wilson, which should make it sound more attractive—for a democratic world. With modifications in certain circumstances, that should be one of our aims also.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. I would very much like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, whom I have heard speak on several occasions in the past few weeks about this report, and from whom I hope to hear more. Earlier today, he said that the average age of members of the panel is more than 70 years old. I wish to encourage him and his fellow panellists to continue to be extremely active here and elsewhere to ensure that this report gets very full coverage. Unless we now take off from the report with open debate in all the major contributing states—contributing in terms of money and troops—this report, like so many before, will sadly fall as governments discover that they have other priorities.
	I am very happy to note that Gareth Evans, one of the noble Lord's fellow panellists, will be coming to London in two and a half weeks' time. He will speak at the London School of Economics on 18 February. I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, will speak in Paris, The Hague, Berlin and various other places to ensure that the report is widely debated.
	We have heard a number of people speak in different ways about the record of the United Nations since the end of the Cold War, which this report addresses. There are some very different perspectives. The conventional wisdom in Washington is that the UN is now in crisis or, perhaps, is close to collapse. One hears and reads more and more often in Washington that we should move away from the United Nations and have an alliance of democracies—an alternative, selective organisation.
	There was an Unstarred Question debate in this House on 18 January that had much of the same critical and dismissive tone about it. From reading that debate, I note that, as there is in the United States an overlap between nationalism and dislike of the UN, in Britain there is an overlap between Euro-scepticism and UN-scepticism, although there is great confusion in that camp about the alternative—which is trust in the benevolence of the United States.
	Considered dispassionately, the record of the UN for the past 15 years has been mixed. There have been some successes, as well as failures. It has been a very painful learning process, of which this report is the latest element. The failure of the United Nations to take on the interconnected conflicts in central Africa, of which Rwanda and Burundi are the worst, is perhaps the greatest failure—much larger even than the current Darfur crisis. But in East Timor and Cambodia the UN has been remarkably successful. In Bosnia and Macedonia, and even more in Kosovo, the game is not yet over.
	The UN has managed to make progress on the climate change agenda. An international criminal court has been set up, although it is not yet fully effective. But progress is being made. The report draws lessons from that and makes a number of useful proposals to strengthen global governance further; namely, to reform the UN Security Council, to strengthen the secretariat, to deal with the problems of financing, and to deal with the problems of finding troops and police personnel of a quality and in a timeliness that can be deployed elsewhere.
	I am struck by the parallel between those who are disappointed that the European Union is not doing all that it should and those who think that the UN should be far better than it is. But to misquote Donald Rumsfeld, we have to work with the state system that we have, not the world order that we would like to have.
	Undoubtedly, the UN suffers from a degree of corruption and a painfully slow decision-making process. So do all other inter-governmental organisations, a good many governments and many multinational companies—perhaps even some Church hierarchies, I would not dare to suggest.
	Perhaps one may compare the present situation to that of the 1970s and 1980s. If one looks, for example, at the World Health Organisation, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and the quality of the UN Development Programme, now, compared to then, clearly some very useful work is being done. I was sorry that this report made only glancing references to the other agencies within the UN system, which play an increasingly important role in strengthening a rule-based international order, although I recognise the need to be selective.
	The International Atomic Energy Authority is now playing an extremely constructive and difficult role in relation to Iran and North Korea. The work of the World Health Organisation on the SARS problem was magnificent: a number of people who were involved early on caught the disease and lost their lives.
	Noble Lords have touched on a wide range of specific issues in this debate—water, child soldiers, small arms trade and so on. I should like to pick out only a few themes: first, the need to hold the United States in global institutions, to which a number of noble Lords have referred. That is an enormous challenge for all of us. The international order that we now have institutionally is, after all, the legacy of President Roosevelt. It was his understanding that it was in the enlightened self-interest of the United States to build a multilateral order within which the United States constrained itself and so gained the benefits of a more orderly global system.
	President Roosevelt also had a far broader understanding of freedom than his current successor. I was rereading the Atlantic charter and some of the speeches that he made in 1941 some weeks ago. He, of course, spoke not only about freedom for self-government and self-expression, but also freedom from want and from fear as part of any worthwhile definition of freedom. The sad rejection of so much of Roosevelt's legacy is part of what I think has gone wrong within American domestic politics, even though, oddly, those who are so determined to dismantle Roosevelt's welfare state, as well as his international legacy, appear to have adopted his wartime ally, Winston Churchill, as their great hero.
	Therefore, on these Benches we support a shared European approach to hold the United States in these institutions. In the terms that this report has pointed out, the European Union is a regional organisation. It is the most effective regional organisation in the world. It contributes 40 per cent, collectively among its governments, of the UN's general budget. It contributes almost one-third of the troops in UN peacekeeping operations. Last year I calculated with one of my research students the number of troops from European states deployed in peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations over the past two to three years. Including deployments to Afghanistan, south-eastern Europe and Iraq, that commitment peaked at 85,000 and has been running at an average of 60,000 to 70,000. That is not a bad contribution to international order. The commitment includes Swedish, Finnish and other troops currently deployed in Sierra Leone, while others are involved in a whole range of peacekeeping operations—and of course Operation Artemis in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which marks the first deployment of EU ready forces under UN authority in response to a request from the Secretary-General. The first troops were deployed within seven days. We should be proud of that effort.
	I want to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Park, that I understand that European Union support for the African Union over the coming 10 years will necessarily take the form of training provision and logistical support, not a major assignment of European troops. But countries which lack transport aircraft, helicopters and logistical support need those elements if they are to be able to deploy.
	We have to convince the United States that others are working to strengthen international order; that the United Nations is not just a talking shop wherein other countries can criticise the United States and contribute little. Happily, European countries now contribute a good deal but should be determined to contribute more.
	We also have to make sure that we engage Asian states more actively. Japan has begun to contribute in terms of troops as well as its very substantial financial contribution. China has some engagement in Africa, although it is clear that we need to engage the Chinese Government more fully in this multilateral order. The same could be said for the Latin American states, including Brazil. That links closely with the proposals made in the report for the expansion of the UN Security Council.
	However, I should say to some noble Lords that I have some doubts about the use of the term "international community", precisely because it suggests that some of us should be defining what the international order is about and leading others to it. I also have considerable doubts about the proposal made by the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, for an organisation for the promotion of co-operation and democracy, in part because we do not yet agree with our American allies on what sort of democracy we wish to promote.

Lord Owen: My Lords, I did not mention that. It was a comment of the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, I apologise if I made a mistake. However, I did refer to the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf.
	The report is absolutely right to stress that we need to hold on to universalism as a principle. We should not be excluding some countries. But I also strongly endorse the report's qualification of sovereignty, that Article 2(7) has now been heavily qualified by the responsibility to protect, the ability to maintain order and the need for intrusive inspection.
	There is a bias in the expansion of the UN Security Council towards the major donors and contributors, which to me seems absolutely right. Part of the reason why the UN General Assembly does not work is because it now has too many micro-states which lack the capability or the capacity to give instructions to their representatives, so that they vote on a corpus basis without thinking about the consequences.
	This is a subject that we need to talk about a great deal. There is an unavoidable tension between universality and credibility, as well as between democratic states, authoritarian states, and the weak and corrupt semi-states. The British responsibility, to which I hope the Minister will refer when she sums up the debate, is to take up and press forward this agenda with other European governments, and set out to persuade the United States that enlightened self-interest requires stronger global institutions.

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate have expressed warm gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and in this case that is more than a formality. We are accustomed to saying such words, but it is perfectly obvious that the noble Lord has made and continues to make a major contribution on these matters, both in his work here and at the United Nations. Frankly, it was a very good day for your Lordships when the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, joined us in this House. I say that even though some flak has flown around during the debate, which has by no means been totally uncritical.
	Obviously we are all in favour of serious UN reform, and this most admirable report sets out the ways in which that might be achieved, dare I say, in an ideal world. However, one must be a little realistic about it. For me the biggest question is the one posed by the noble Lord, Lord Desai, in his remarks. Can the UN from here on out provide a satisfactory system of international law? Can it provide the guardianship or the evolution and development of the standards of international behaviour which we must have if this globe is to survive in one piece? One has only to pose such a question to realise how big it is. The realistic answer has to contain some doubt. That is for a simple and central reason, which is that the United Nations has to include everyone. Every single nation is included aside from certain very exceptional circumstances that we have heard about.
	Many of these nations, possibly even the majority of nations represented at the United Nations, do not share our democratic values. They are not interested in what Condoleezza Rice described in an interview the other day as "outposts of tyranny". They are not interested in intervention in Zimbabwe or in Burma, and they were not very interested in the situation in Rwanda. The ethos for massive and decisive humanitarian intervention is not there.
	It is no use blaming poor Mr Kofi Annan for this. It is not reasonable to suggest that it is the Secretary-General's fault. It is not his fault at all. Nor was it the fault of Boutros Boutros Ghali before him. I thought that he was an excellent Secretary-General. It was not his fault that the United Nations was behaving in line with the behaviour and attitudes of its members rather than creating a broad group which could be mobilised and carried forward by a brilliant Secretary-General. That cannot be done. Many of the criticisms we have heard levelled at Kofi Annan are really deplorable and are motivated by other considerations that have nothing to do with his own excellent qualities.
	However, if one is looking for the faults, one need look no further than the UN Commission on Human Rights, which has been discussed at length in the debate. It is a travesty. The chair has been held by countries which have no concern whatever for human rights, under a system of rotation which no one seems to be able to stop. Some 25 per cent of the members of the commission are dictatorships with no interest in human rights outrages at all. Even looking at that aspect alone, one cannot recognise or accept that the United Nations as it is constructed today should be the only fount or cornerstone of international wisdom and morality. I share the disappointment expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, in the panel's idea for the UN Commission on Human Rights. It has suggested that it would somehow be improved if everyone joined in. However, I do not think that that would be a cure in any way. Indeed, it might make it a bit worse.
	Even the most important permanent members of the Security Council are not going to co-operate that much in bringing about change. China has clearly indicated that it will not go along with UN resolutions of the tough kind that we would like to see taken as regards western Sudan or in many other places. That is regrettable, but it is understandable. It is only realistic to acknowledge that that is the case. China has other interests and another agenda today. It is voraciously hunting for oil throughout the Gulf, in Venezuela and in many other countries to feed its colossal economic growth. I am afraid that China is also deeply involved in the international arms trade—particularly in the small arms trade—a matter to which the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke so movingly and tellingly earlier in the debate.
	So, although one must hope that the UN will continue its efforts to deal with disarmament and to recast the crumbling non-proliferation treaty, one must hope also that it will take collective action on issues such as water, a point raised by my noble friend Lady Hooper and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. But to look for achievement of some of the more ambitious aims in the way of humanitarian intervention and security is to hope for too much.
	What is the solution to the issue of Security Council reform? The panel has taken a very brave stab at it. It suggests two possible ways forward, and it is very welcome that those have been put on the table at all. There is no doubt in my mind that if it could be engineered for Japan and India to come to the top table that would make a major contribution and an improvement to the whole atmosphere and ethos of the Security Council.
	Japan is now reasserting itself as what it calls a "normal" country. In fact, what that means is that it is reasserting itself as a global power, with a reach commensurate with its colossal economic power. It is developing a proactive diplomacy, undergoing a huge military make-over and developing a ballistic missile weapons system. None of these activities seem to have been noticed in the western press, but they change the whole geopolitics of Asia and indeed of the world. So it would make a terrific difference if Japan arrived. It is a matter to which we give lip service—more than lip service; we would like to see it happen—but it is not easy to envisage how it will happen.
	Germany, too, is rightly saying that it feels uncomfortable about leaving representation at the UN to France and Great Britain and that it wants a seat. Indeed, the German argument is that there should be some kind of European Union seat at the UN which would better represent its positions. I believe that is now official German policy. I hope that we will not hear anything more about the idea of an EU seat.
	The Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, told the House the other day that it is impossible for the EU to have a seat—and probably under the present arrangements it is—but it is a very bad idea for the obvious reason that a coherent European policy on the major issues of the day would not emerge and we would have a muffled effect instead of the more incisive views of the separate countries. That is clearly demonstrated by the events of the past two years.
	Like the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, I feel that the chances of climbing this mountain and starting Security Council reform on the model suggested by the panel are not very good, although we should certainly try to seek ways forward.
	So where do we go from here in search of the international consensus which we need and the development and establishment of agreed standards of international behaviour which we must have? In other words, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, put it, what next? I suggest that we would do better to start from looking at UN principles rather than at UN votes. The principles need updating in a terrorist age. Part 3 of the report does that and grapples with the central issue of the criteria for humanitarian intervention. The difficulty, I suppose, is whether the General Assembly, as constituted, will ever be ready to put them into practice. That question hangs in the air.
	As I have indicated, I believe that the best hope is for the UN to proceed to build on its successes in collective action—particularly in the area of disarmament, although there is a long way to go—through its many agencies, some of which are not very good and some of which are extremely good and full of dedicated people.
	But for security we shall have to rely on coalitions which go wider than just the American ambit and which are genuinely committed to democratic values. Whether the solution should be the one suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf—which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, did not like—or the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, that there should be a kind of admission charge and admission test for United Nations membership, I do not know. But merely trying to hive off inside the UN countries that are alleged to be pure democracies—an idea which the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, was airing the other night in the UN debate—is a dead end.
	I know that it is the view of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that you could spend a whole decade arguing about what were the criteria that described a pure democracy, a less pure democracy and so on. To those who say it is merely a question of elections and votes, I would point out that one poll does not guarantee democracy, as we all remember very vividly from Weimar in the last century.
	So, when it comes to security, we have to be content with building on ad hoc arrangements, as we did in Kosovo, in Bosnia and in other instances, while hoping that the UN will continue its good work in many lesser areas and will spread the democratic habit in the world, as it has done to a considerable extent.
	I come back to a quotation which I have used before at the Dispatch Box from Dag Hammarskjold many years ago. He said that,
	"the United Nations was not created to take mankind to paradise, but merely to save humanity from hell".
	I hope that it at least lives up to that task in the future.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for initiating the debate. As your Lordships would expect of a first class diplomat, he gets top marks for his timing as the international community enters a new phase in the debate on reform of the United Nations.
	Additionally, we look forward to a visit by the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, next week, when UN reform and the millennium development goals will be high on the agenda. I know that he will be very welcome and that his planned speech on the UN will be much appreciated.
	Since November 2003, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has been a member of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, and since the publication of the panel's report he has been very active in promoting the report and the need for United Nations reform. He has of course had a very distinguished career in the Diplomatic Service and later as the United Kingdom's special representative to Cyprus, but his input into this report and the very clear mark he has left upon it are as significant as anything he has achieved before.
	The noble Lord's debate calls attention to three elements: the report of the high-level panel; the review of the millennium development goals; and conflict in Africa. These three themes are of course closely linked and I shall try to address all three in answering some of the issues raised today.
	While the high-level panel report is ambitious, covering the full range of the United Nations' activities, it is based on the core premise that security and development are interlinked—that neither is possible without the other—a point very well argued by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. The Government strongly endorse that view—and nowhere is there a stronger need for security and development than in Africa.
	Of course, 2003 was a very difficult year for the United Nations, with the divisions in the international community over Iraq reflected in New York. In opening the General Assembly in September 2003, the Secretary-General's response was to launch the high-level panel, tasked with making recommendations on improving the performance of the United Nations in tackling threats to peace and security. This bold initiative demonstrates the Secretary-General's determination to tackle the problems which came so sharply into focus in 2003. I agree very strongly with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, about the role of the Secretary-General.
	But this has also provided us with a very real opportunity to establish a more modern and more effective United Nations. I am very pleased that the panel has addressed the United Kingdom's priorities, which were set out in a paper submitted to the panel by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary. The panel sets out an ambitious agenda for the UN which is more proactive and deals more comprehensively with the threats to peace and security by recognising the importance of conflict prevention and peace-building after conflict, a subject which we have had cause to discuss a great deal in the past year or 18 months. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have both warmly welcomed the report.
	The noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, was completely right to point out the enormous scale of the issues inherent in United Nations reform and in the reform of its institutions. The panel makes recommendations to deal with the threats of terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Crucially, in my view, it has grasped the nettle of exploring the circumstances under which the United Nations should authorise military action to prevent a threat materialising or to deal with humanitarian catastrophe. It also acknowledges the need to address the link between poverty and conflict, and recognises that environmental degradation, particularly climate change, is a threat that needs to be tackled with the same rigour and urgency as other global threats.
	One recommendation of far-reaching importance is the peace-building commission. The high-level panel identified a gap in the United Nations' institutions, which is widely recognised. There is a clear need for more and better co-ordination within the international community when it comes to preventing conflict and planning for peace.
	The proposal for a peace-building commission as a means to strengthen the UN's ability to deliver better conflict prevention, management and resolution is therefore one which Her Majesty's Government support, although I am bound to say that the well argued contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, about the necessity of acting within capability was very well made. I assure the noble Baroness that at present we envisage the commission playing a role in ensuring coherent, integrated planning for international engagement in a country. That process will have the added advantage of bringing together the UN agencies, of which some of your Lordships have spoken, and a broader set of key international institutions and regional partners to share analysis and thinking.
	The responsibility to protect was the issue upon which the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, my noble and learned friend Lord Morris of Aberavon and the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, concentrated their remarks. The Government particularly welcome the panel's attention to, and endorsement of, a collective responsibility to protect against genocide, ethnic cleansing and other widespread humanitarian abuses.
	The responsibility of the international community to protect the victims of abuse is clear—an issue about which the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke so powerfully. He highlighted the appalling problem of child soldiers and his concern that the issue was not properly addressed in the report. Personally, I have enormous sympathy with the points he makes, and believe that the international community—by which I mean the whole of the international community, not just the countries of sub-Saharan Africa—now needs urgently to address this issue. The question the most reverend Primate begged is when the international community should intervene militarily when conflicts arise. As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, argued so persuasively, in 1994, the international community failed the people of Rwanda. We have a real responsibility to try to ensure that this never happens again. But as the terrible combination of violence and poverty in Darfur demonstrates, we still have no really effective mechanisms—the ones that we need—to help people to protect themselves, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, so vividly demonstrated in his contribution.
	Since Rwanda, the United Kingdom has taken the lead in pushing for guidelines which would recognise that the Security Council and the UN have a responsibility to protect people subjected to this sort of violence. The Prime Minister suggested some in 1999, and we strongly endorse the panel's decision to address this controversial issue.
	Member states of the United Nations are, of course, rightly protective of their own sovereignty. But Her Majesty's Government believe that there is a limit to that independence when a state begins to persecute its own people or when a state stands by to see one part of its population persecute and slaughter another part of its population. I am, therefore, very much of the view expressed so eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf.
	Frankly, I believe that a prime example of this was the action that we, the United States and our allies in NATO took over Kosovo in 1999. As my noble and learned kinsman Lord Morris of Aberavon underlined in his persuasive speech, two things were clear in Kosovo. First, the humanitarian situation in Kosovo was something that none of us could ignore. Secondly, action through the Security Council was not possible. The United Kingdom Government realised that they could not stand by and do nothing. The action we took was decisive, and eventually it was successful. We acted to prevent an immediate and overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe. I believe that we should be ready to act similarly, should similar circumstances ever arise in the future. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Owen, who is very well versed in these issues, that it was not the lack of a clear definition of overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe that frustrated action in Kosovo; it was the lack of political will to act.
	The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, argued that a United Nations properly reformed, properly revitalised and properly resourced would be a far better means of dealing with the international responsibility to deal with humanitarian catastrophe. But to do that, the Security Council has to overcome the reluctance that it has shown not only over Kosovo and Rwanda but that it is now showing over Darfur, and to act in cases where human life is lost or where thousands of lives are threatened on an unimaginable scale.
	The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, highlighted the counter-proliferation issues. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, shared with us his concerns about omissions in the report. My noble friend Lord Lea of Crondall was also exercised on that point.
	We warmly welcome the panel's work in this important area. It is extremely helpful to highlight the risks to global security from weapons of mass destruction, especially if they fall into the hands of terrorists. The United Kingdom can support most of the panel's recommendations, and follow-up will be for organisations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency or the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The panel report gives extremely useful impetus to the work that the United Kingdom is already pursuing in these fora on most of these recommendations. I think that we have worked very hard on these non-proliferation issues, although I am bound to say that our efforts have not always been crowned with success internationally.
	My noble friends Lady Whitaker and Lord Desai highlighted the focus on human rights activity in the UN. We certainly welcome the emphasis that the panel report has placed on the issue, including an enhanced role for the Security Council for the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Human rights should be a central part of all the UN's activities and should not be considered in isolation. I agreed with much of the wisdom inherent in the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, on human rights activities. However, I agreed with my noble friend Lady Whitaker that there should be real human rights expertise throughout the Commission for Human Rights delegations. It is, of course, for individual governments to choose their own head of delegation, but I assure my noble friend that our own head—our ambassador in Geneva, Nick Thorne—is fully expert in human rights issues.
	Many noble Lords turned their attention to the Security Council. As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, indicated, the high-level panel also addressed this issue. But as the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, said, it was not by way of making a firm recommendation but by putting forward two options to contribute to the debate on the issue. Like the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, I believe that no one seriously argues that the composition of the Security Council does not need revisiting. He is right to argue that the council essentially reflects the world of 1945 rather than the world of 2005.
	To preserve its legitimacy, the council needs to expand its membership to take account of the main players in the world today and to give stronger representation to developing countries. The British Government position on this is clear: we favour the creation of new permanent members, to include Germany, Japan and three representatives of the developing countries, among which we see Brazil and India as pre-eminent candidates from their regions. We also want wider non-permanent membership, again to include more members from the developing countries, from eastern Europe, possibly from the Arab nations. However, I am not quite sure that we are ready for the QMV model as argued by my noble friend Lord Desai.
	I assure the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, that we will participate actively in the debate on Security Council reform in the forthcoming months. We recognise that this is a divisive issue, on which individual member states will hold very strong opinions.
	My noble friend Lord Judd argued for international consensus, the international observation of the rule of law, and international ownership of the UN agenda. Of course, we can all agree on that vision as an ideal. The problem is very much as articulated by the noble Lord, Lord Howell: the whole question is how we achieve that. What are the practical levers at our disposal which would give us a practical approach that would lead to nations being able to embrace that sort of approach?
	Sometimes, the United Nations is, as we all know, paralysed by deadlock. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, described that in his opening speech. It happened on Iraq and, as the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, argued, it happens all too frequently on the Middle East. In my almost eight years as a Minister, I have observed all too often that failure in the United Nations is not so much because of deliberate deadlock, but because of inertia. We believe that the 2005 summit represents a major opportunity for the international community to overcome its sometimes all too natural tendency to step back from the real issues confronting the UN and to develop real consensus on the key issues—not just of international conflict but the crucial ones of development, which can so often feed that conflict if not properly addressed.
	The noble Lord, Lord Patel, the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, and my noble friend Lord Brett concentrated on the millennium development goals, which were of course agreed at the United Nations millennium summit in September 2000. Since then, nearly 190 countries have signed up. The goals range from halving global poverty and hunger to protecting the environment, improving health and sanitation, tackling illiteracy and discrimination against women. The millennium review summit will take place in New York this September. It is a crucial opportunity to measure progress on the development goals through the report of the millennium project, and to address the security objectives covered by the high-level panel.
	The Government have warmly welcomed the report of the millennium project published on 17 January. The report demonstrated that if the 2015 goals are achieved, 500 million people will be lifted out of extreme poverty. Aid is working; we can achieve the development goals, even in Africa, where progress is slowest. But we can do that only if the necessary resources are really made available. The report will be crucial in building international support for increased aid levels—because, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said, on current rates of progress the halving of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa will be achieved not in the year 2015 but, horrifyingly, in 2150, 135 years later. The elimination of avoidable infant deaths will also not be achieved in 2015 but in 2165, 150 years later.
	That is why the United Kingdom is proposing what the noble Lord, Lord Patel, called for—that is, an act of political will to tackle this issue, or an international finance facility. That facility is founded upon long-term binding donor commitments from the richest countries—countries such as ours. It builds upon the additional 16 billion dollars already pledged at Monterey. On the basis of those commitments, and more, it leverages in additional money from the international capital markets to raise the amount of development aid for the years up to 2015. Of course the responsibility for making faster progress rests with developed and developing countries. But the fact is that aid really works when there is enough money available. That may be a very simple and straightforward point, but money is what is needed to tackle poverty, and we need significantly to scale up the resources available for countries committed to poverty reduction.
	There are countries that are making some real progress in that respect. As we saw, there are also targeted areas of immediate concern, which we see in the events such as the one that we have just experienced, in the aftermath of the tsunami. But crucially, we must also work on ensuring longer-term progress, which can come about only by ensuring that countries have the economies necessary to ensure prosperity, health and education for their own citizens. My noble friend Lord Brett is right: that means employment, too, as employment makes that prosperity possible.
	One of the Government's policy changes that I, for one, am proudest of, was the decision to untie development aid from trade to help countries to develop their economies. We give aid because aid is not based on what we get out of giving that aid. Frankly, I believe that more countries need to examine their own policies, here in Europe and on the other side of the Atlantic, in that respect. As well as more and better aid, the United Kingdom is taking a lead in ensuring more debt relief and further progress on the Doha development trade round, which is absolutely vital for the economies of the developing nations. A successful outcome from the Doha trade round could reduce the number of people living on two dollars a day by 60 million in sub-Saharan Africa. It should move every European Union conscience that the EU still subsidises our cows twice as well as we support the poor people in the world.
	Today, 27 countries are benefiting with 70 billion dollars-worth of unpayable debt being written off; 37 countries are now potentially eligible, with up to 100 billion dollars of debt relief now possible. Because of debt relief in Tanzania, 31,000 new classrooms have been built, 18,000 new teachers have been recruited, and the goal of primary education for all will be achieved by the end of the year. The United Kingdom is leading the way on 100 per cent bilateral debt relief. We will relieve those countries still under the burden of debt by paying our share—that is, 10 per cent—of their payments to the World Bank and the African Development Bank. We are encouraging other counties to follow our lead.
	The UK will make a full contribution to the September summit and its preparations as a committed supporter of the UN, a firm believer in more effective multilateral action and the holder of the G8 and EU presidencies at the time. We see a particular correlation with our G8 presidency focus on Africa and climate change. We hope that the summit can bring collective agreement on other international priorities such as poverty, environmental degradation, terrorism, conflict prevention and, of course, proliferation.
	I turn now to African conflict. I was grateful to my noble friend Lord Lea of Crondall for addressing the issue of Africa and to the noble Lords, Lord Owen and Lord Alton, who also concentrated part of their remarks on the issue. Many of the panel's recommendations in the work of the millennium review summit are relevant to conflict in Africa. I noted the important points made by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, about international courts. We shall be using our EU and G8 presidencies to try to make progress on some of the difficult issues facing that continent. This House will be aware of the Prime Minister's Commission for Africa, a demonstration of the United Kingdom's commitment to resolving the problems of that continent. I know from my recent visits to the Magreb counties how seriously the commission is viewed, based on consulting the nations of Africa, and how enthusiastically those countries in the region are responding to the consultation exercise.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, argued, resolving conflict and promoting peace and security in the continent remains a fundamental challenge for the international community, and this Government are committed to addressing it. Of course, economic weakness in Africa remains an obstacle to long-term development, caused in part by lack of inward investment and by corruption, as my noble friend Lord Lea of Crondall said. Only 1 per cent of all international investment goes into the whole of the continent of Africa. But there are some signs of progress, not least through the NePAD endeavour, and success stories are emerging slowly and painfully—in Mozambique, Botswana, South Africa, Ghana, Senegal, Namibia and Rwanda, which are all committed to good governance, which is so necessary to make the economic progress needed.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, asked about older people caring for victims of HIV/AIDS. We are looking, as others are in the donor community, at the balance between prevention and treatment. I shall try to write to the noble Baroness further on the important points that she raised on that.
	The noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, mentioned the very important points around reproductive health. He knows that the Government support his view on the importance of the issue. He knows, too, how sensitive the issue is in the international community, but it is nevertheless one on which we should continue to work hard. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, for the important points that she made about the role that access to water plays in conflict around the world. We saw that all too clearly in Iraq, in how the Saddam Hussein regime treated the Marsh Arabs.
	This has been a very wide-ranging debate with a blend of vision and wisdom that has lifted our sights beyond individual national interests to the collective interests of those with whom we share this small and fragile planet. A number of your Lordships remarked on the relative roles of the rich and powerful countries as compared with those of the poorer more vulnerable countries, particularly in respect of the United States. Those points were covered by my noble friend Lord Judd, the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, the noble Lords, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton and Lord Dykes, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, in his excellent contribution. However, that begs a huge question for all of us. Governments can be wise and visionary but they also have clear responsibilities to those who put them in power and those whom they lead. All governments put the security and prosperity of their own nations first; that is what all governments do.
	For some that position is very clear-cut. The bigger, the richer, the more powerful the country, the clearer it perceives its individual national interest to be. The fact is that smaller, poorer, weaker nations must rely on others and have to make alliances for trade and defence. However, I sense from the debate that this world picture is going through yet another cycle of change and that the global threats, whether of terrorism, climate change, WMD, regional conflict or civil war now have to be met by global solutions—international co-operation, shared science, shared technology, enforceable treaties and fair trade. Now even the biggest and most powerful must learn the art of compromise through international mechanisms, however flawed those mechanisms may be. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said, all the agencies such as the UN, the WTO and the WHO need our support, our money, and they need the best we have to offer in brain power if they are to be the real instruments for change that we need.
	Like the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, I hope that the UN will be more respected because I hope it will reform. I hope that it will raise its sights above the narrow interests of those who have the biggest voices. I hope that others will follow our example in divorcing aid from trade, cancelling debt and making some real, tangible efforts to indicate a way forward. This Government will continue to argue, persuade and be committed to every opportunity available to us this year to pursue those issues vigorously.

Lord Hannay of Chiswick: My Lords, I would like to begin by thanking very warmly all noble Lords who participated in this debate. It has been an excellent debate. I would particularly like to thank the three Front Bench spokesmen who made such thoughtful and prescient contributions. I would like to say a special word of appreciation to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, who made a magnificent contribution and brought to our debate the moral dimension that it requires.
	I thank noble Lords for, and am slightly overwhelmed by, all the plaudits that came in my direction. I was reminded of the fact that the president of the Security Council always gets a script from the secretariat which says, "Thank the ambassador for his kind remarks", which some presidents of the council interpret as indeed thanking the speaker for his kind remarks even if he has spent the previous 20 minutes berating them. I did not need to make such a fool of myself today as I can genuinely thank noble Lords for their remarks.
	Our debate today, and a debate that took place in another place in Westminster Hall very recently, constitute just about the best message that we could send to the Secretary-General when he comes here next week. We thereby demonstrate that we take these issues seriously and that we regard them as matters which must be discussed before they are decided. That constitutes a great contribution for him at a time when he himself is confronting a sea of difficulties.
	I wish to address two points. One concerns the United States' role and the other concerns human rights. On the United States' role, I am a firm believer that the United Nations needs the active participation of the United States and cannot possibly afford to dispense with that. I believe equally strongly that the United States needs the United Nations and that it cannot meet all these challenges and threats on its own.
	What has to be done now in this debate, which I hope is also going on in the United States—I believe that it is as I participated in it myself in Chicago last week—is to remind oneself of the historical context. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, stung me slightly when he said that the panel did not have a historical vision as we did, among other things, think quite a lot about the interesting contrast between the situation now and that pertaining in 1945. Many people in the United States ask why they need the United Nations as theirs is the most powerful country in the world. In 1945, of course, the United States was incomparably more powerful in relation to the rest of the world than it is now. It represented more than half the world economy and it knew—although no one else knew except the government of this country—that it had deliverable nuclear weapons. Yet at that time the United States signed the charter; indeed, it did the most of any country to write the charter. It did not do so as an act of idealism, although idealism was there; it did so because of hard national interest. It decided that it was in its national interest to put its faith in collective security. In a way we have to recreate that situation. It is no good thinking that the United Nations can be so designed as to tie down the United States, like Gulliver was tied down with thousands of tiny threads, and then everything will be fine. It will not work. We have to convince the United States by our powers of advocacy and by listening also to its concerns that it is in its interest as much as in our interest that the United Nations succeeds.
	As regards human rights, we all recognised when we put forward the proposal that the Commission on Human Rights should be a universal body that this was counter-intuitive. It has not surprised me that quite a few people have criticised it; it is perfectly legitimate to do so. As always in these matters of policy, you have to look at the alternatives. The alternative, which was to try to make out of a restricted membership criteria that would exclude certain people and promote others, would, as a speaker in the debate said, tie the whole of the UN and the Commissioner for Human Rights up in knots for several years and probably not result in any different membership from the present one. The proposal for universal membership was and is supported by the Secretary-General and supported very powerfully by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour. Therefore, one has to look more at the machinery that we suggested should be inserted alongside the commission itself; that is, the panel of qualified human rights experts who would be put forward by the Secretary-General and the High Commissioner and not by the members of the Commission on Human Rights though they would take the formal decision on it. That could bring a new dimension to the very discredited discussions of that commission.
	We must not give up on the United Nations as a vehicle for delivering better performance on human rights. The efforts that those who have a bad performance on human rights go to to avoid being criticised is perhaps the best tribute that there can be to the potential influence and power of the United Nations, if only we can make it work better.
	I conclude by saying that the United Nations, like other international organisations, has to adapt or be marginal. I hope that this year will be the year in which it goes through a profound adaptation. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, before we start the next debate I advise the House that Back-Bench speeches are limited to seven rather than six minutes.

Parents and Children

Lord Northbourne: rose to call attention to the role of parents in the welfare of children and to the case for involving parents more in the design and delivery of services for children; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, it is my unpleasant duty to bring the mind of the House back from the sunrise over Africa to the sad and difficult problems of some families and children here at home.
	In September 2003, the Government published a Green Paper, Every Child Matters. It was launched on the basis that it was a major new initiative to improve the lives of children. Chapter 3 dealt with support for parents. This evening, I want to look back at chapter 3 to see how far we have got down the road that it projected. Chapter 3 starts with these words:
	"The Government intends to put supporting parents and carers at the heart of its approach to improving children's lives".
	The question is—is that heart still beating?
	In this debate, I will use the word "parent" to include all those family members who take on a parental role from love, including birth parents, step-parents, grandparents and adoptive parents. They are the people who are most special in a child's world. Parents are the most important people in their children's lives. Why are committed parents so important? I cannot do better than to start by quoting Every Child Matters. Paragraphs 3.1 and 3.2 state:
	"The bond between the child and their parents is the most critical influence on a child's life. Parenting has a strong impact on a child's educational development, behaviour, and mental health . . . In the past, public policy has paid insufficient attention to supporting parents and helping families find solutions for themselves".
	This view of the family is supported by a large body of good modern research, which confirms that children who grow up in a functional two-parent family are more likely to do better in school and in later life, judged by a whole range of relevant criteria. If any of your Lordships should want to follow that up, there is an excellent summary of 300 pieces of research on this subject by Cowan and Cowan in 2003.
	For healthy emotional development, a young child needs secure, loving attachment to one or more adults who can be relied on to behave consistently, and who can teach the child by example how to love, how to forgive, how to trust, and how to interact with the outside world. A loving parent's instinctive affection builds a child's self-esteem. Adults available and willing to give this degree of commitment are hard to find outside the family. Healthy emotional and social development depends to a huge extent on parents and family.
	Parenting also affects education. In a recent study Charles Desforges concludes:
	"The most important finding from the point of view of this review is that parental involvement in the form of 'at-home good parenting' has a significant positive effect on children's achievement and adjustment, even after all other factors shaping attainment have been taken out of the equation".
	If committed parents are such a crucial factor in a child's early social, emotional and educational development, they are surely an important asset to the nation. Should we not be valuing them more?
	There is another more sordid, but practical, reason why committed parents are so important. The cost to the taxpayer of raising the nation's children outside two-parent families is escalating, arguably out of control. I am told that the total cost of child-contingent support now stands at £20 billion a year. Most functional two-parent families provide a substantial part of the cost of raising their own child, and also provide much of the childcare themselves. By contrast, the cost to the taxpayer of a child in local authority care can vary from £15,000 a year to a horrendous £150,000 a year, which I know well, as I have been a trustee of the Caldicott community, which deals with some of the most difficult children.
	In March 2004, there were nearly 61,000 children in local authority care. There is another problem. In many local authorities today, there is an acute shortage of social workers, childcare workers and health visitors, so costs are almost certainly bound to go up. As we shall be hearing in my noble friend Lord Listowel's debate next week, outcomes for children leaving care are far from good. Care is not only expensive, but the outcomes are often disappointing. Are we not beginning to overestimate the capacity of the state to rescue children living in precarious environments? Should we not rather be spending some of that money, some of that £20 billion, to improve those precarious environments and to support parents more?
	Some 27 per cent of the nation's 10.3 million children now live in lone-parent households. That is a higher percentage than in any other European country and it is rapidly overtaking that of the United States. Although many lone parents do an excellent job, research shows that children in lone-parent families are likely to have, on average, worse social, educational and health outcomes, and are significantly more likely to suffer emotional problems, engage in criminal activity, and abuse drugs and alcohol when compared to children who live with both their natural parents. Lone-parent families also are a large and enduring customer base for income supplementation by the state.
	A recent study by Jill Kirby for the Centre for Policy Studies, which has been challenged, has shown that to raise two children in a single-parent family may cost the taxpayer as much as £11,000 a year more than to raise the same children in an average two-parent family. The report also shows that the present system of taxation, benefits, and tax credits provides an incentive for young parents to live apart and not to marry. Is that not a dangerous and foolishly perverse incentive? All these facts and figures suggest that support for parents, if it can reduce the number of children in local authority care, or if it can reduce the number of single-parent families, is likely to be in the best interests of the children and also of the Exchequer.
	I shall now look at the proposals that the Government made in chapter 3 of the Green Paper. In each case, I hope that the Minister will be able to tell the House what has been achieved and what is in the pipeline, and what funding, if any, has been made available for each project. It is a terrible task that I am setting him, but I gave him notice of the question. The proposed universal services were: a national helpline—we already have Parentline Plus, so what will be added by this additional helpline?; parents' information meetings at key transition points—an excellent idea, but who will co-ordinate these and how will they persuade parents to attend?; family learning programmes—the same questions apply; support to fathers—very important and a subject on which I wished to speak this evening, but I do not think that I shall have time; better communication between parents and schools—yes, of course; childcare, early years' education, social care and schools working more closely with parents—my goodness yes, but why have they not been doing it already?; joint training and development in behaviour issues for professionals, about which I do not know.
	The tailored help and support suggested were: home visiting programmes for parents-to-be—I should like to speak for a moment later on what I found in Florida when I was there recently; parent education programmes targeted at the parents of five to eight year-olds; family group conferencing; family mediation services and stress and relationship counselling. All those are excellent and necessary ideas.
	There is agreement that the voluntary sector is probably the best way of providing these services. Are the Government aware that it is going to be very difficult for voluntary providers of these services to operate these programmes efficiently on a long-term basis, unless there is some guarantee of continuity of funding, at least for those projects which are successful? To have to re-dress up each project every three years in a new set of clothes to get pump-priming funding is a waste of everyone's time. It is much better to follow your winners.
	All these proposals are helpful, but do they really strike at the root of the problem? Surely what we most need is to increase the number of stable, happy, functional families. We can do that only by improving the environment in which families bring up their children—from housing to all sorts of environmental factors—and by giving more parents the knowledge and skills that they need to do the job.
	I want to mention two or three additional ideas; that is all for which I have time. The National Family and Parenting Institute suggested recently that there is a case for a regular, in-depth policy review to reconcile different strands of government policy for families and children. It also suggested for consideration—it is an extremely interesting idea, although difficult—a statement of parental rights and responsibilities in the form of a parent's code. Some of our present difficulties arise from fairly large differences of opinion among parents and others about the responsibilities and duties of a parent. Perhaps that applies most of all to fathers.
	Children need a stable family base. Family stability itself requires commitment and relationship skills to hold together the team giving that base. Many things can be done to increase the proportion of happy, functional two-parent families. One action that we could take is to change the tax and benefit system and housing policies, so that they send the message that society supports and encourages stable two-parent families.
	My penultimate point is the importance of relationship education. Relate gave me a briefing that stated, and I believe it to be true:
	"The five desirable outcomes which are listed in the recent Children Act can best be achieved through a Relationship education Programme in every school".
	That programme must be not only compulsory, but well taught by teachers trained for the job.
	Young men and women today also need the opportunity to learn the knowledge and skills they will need to be good parents. That is often particularly welcome around the time that the first child is born. That brings me to the experience in Florida, which is also the stable families policy in 26 states of the United States. There is a voluntary scheme whereby all young mothers—either just before or just after they have their child—can opt to have a screening. If it is felt that they could benefit from help, they are offered help, for up to five years, of home visiting up to once a week by a professionally trained person. So far, the programme in Florida, where I talked to the workers, has been welcomed by the parents and seems to prove successful in improving the outcomes for children.
	I should have liked to have spoken about fathers. In Every Child Matters, the Government promised,
	"support programmes for fathers as well as mothers",
	and,
	"parents' information meetings at key transition points".
	Those are important ideas. I hope that the Minister may be able to tell us more about them.
	I want to finish with one point which I believe to be crucially important. In supporting parents, how you do it is just as important as what you do. People often ask me how you can provide support services to parents without being accused of interfering in the private life of the family or being a nanny state. The answer is really quite simple. Right from the start, you ask each group of parents what they want and what they feel that they need, and then you listen to them carefully and patiently. By doing so, you win their confidence, and then you work with them to develop a plan which meets their needs as far as possible and has their support and confidence.
	That is known as the community development model. I think that it was worked out by Sussex University 20 years ago for work in overseas territories. It is tried and tested. It was the way in which Sure Start was introduced, which I am sure is one major reason why Sure Start was such a success. It was recently suggested by Norman Glass in an article in the social section of the Guardian that the Government were going away from this approach in launching children's centres. Is it the Government's intention that the 3,500 new Sure Start children's centres which they propose be developed on the community development model, with parents as partners, or are they to be introduced and run by professionals and officials directed by the local authority? If that is their plan, it is a mistake and I beg them to think again.
	I shall end with two quotations. The first is from the NFPI, which said:
	"A review of research from over 350 studies . . . in 1988 found that parents want flexible services which acknowledge that they lead busy and pressured lives. Parents place great importance on being listened to and treated with respect".
	Secondly, a 2004 study by David Quinton titled Supporting Parents: Messages from Research states:
	"Whether they were talking about their relationships with their families, or their relationships with services, an abiding message from all the parents in these studies was, that they wanted to feel in control when they were trying to solve their parenting problems . . . Service professionals need to recognize the change in their role from providers of care to enablers of care, and to recognize parents as part of the team . . . It is crucial that support services for parents leave parents in control, listen to them and work with them in the design and delivery of services. If they do not their intervention will be resented, and mistrusted, and it will fail".
	Nothing is more expensive than projects which fail. I beg to move for Papers.

Baroness Massey of Darwen: My Lords, I must begin with an apology. I have been caught up by the business of the House and its various timing alterations, and have another commitment in another part of the House. I shall therefore miss some speeches, but will be back as soon as I can.
	I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for securing this debate and for presenting his case so passionately and posing so many interesting questions. He has long supported parental issues with great vigour. I am glad that he referred to Every Child Matters, which sets out intentions to consult parents and support them. Indeed, it has been most encouraging over the past few years to see so much structure being set up around parents and families—for example, the National Family and Parenting Institute, Sure Start and new opportunities with children's trusts. I have just been looking at the draft guidance on interagency co-operation for those, which must include:
	"Child-centred, outcome-led vision . . . for all children, young people and their families. This must be informed by the views of local children, young people and their families".
	The guidance also states that delivery should be organised around the child, young person or family rather than professional boundaries or existing agencies. That is significant.
	I am all for consulting parents; I am all for consulting any user of services of any kind. It is helpful to the user and to the professionals. It is often essential also to consult the young people who are at the receiving end of services, and it may sometimes be inappropriate to consult parents. I would put confidentiality for young people high on my agenda for delivering young people's services. It has been shown that when young people help to design services—for example, sexual health services—they are more likely to use them.
	The role of parents in the welfare of their child may be to transfer some of the decision-making to the child—at an appropriate age, of course. Parents who are positive, confident and socially skilled are more likely to take a positive parenting role and to contribute to consultation in a proactive way. Does the Minister agree with me—and obviously with the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne—that many parents need support, some more than others, to carry out their role of parenting? As most of us know, it is a difficult task.
	As the noble Lord said, the quality of parenting can influence academic achievement, emotional stability, social skills, life chances, and the child's ability to make informed choices. Significant research also points to factors that predispose young people to take risks. Those include indifferent family environments, poor parental supervision, family conflict, parental condoning of bad behaviour, and a family history of problem behaviour. All are to do with the parenting role. Of course, a conflict can exist in two-parent families.
	The quality of parenting also crucially influences how the next generation parents. Certainly, compensatory programmes can work. Sure Start, for example, involves parents and builds parenting skills. Good early years education programmes, mentoring, extra support in schools,a welcome re-emphasis on personal and social education and the National Healthy School Standard all impact positively on children and families. Parents who do not get involved may have intense problems of poverty, poor housing and lack of language, for example, and we need imaginative and sensitive programmes to help those parents.
	I am a governor at a primary school where a proportion of children enter not knowing what a book is, not knowing what acceptable social behaviour is, or what a productive relationship with an adult is. Sadly, we have experience in my school of challenging behaviour by parents towards teachers. It is a small minority, but it is challenging behaviour none the less. That does not provide a good example for children. Of course, we have evidence of the support that parents need and of the kind of parenting that is beneficial for children.
	Parentline Plus receives calls about how to handle challenging behaviour, isolation, talking to children about drugs and sex, and about child development. All these are very complex issues. In my role as chair of the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse, I have also seen parenting programmes in prisons, designed to help both men and women prisoners look at parenting issues and develop skills. All of that is welcome. But I sometimes wonder why we often leave it until a parent is in difficulty before we extend help.
	I remember, many years ago when my own children were little, running a pre-school playgroup in the community where we lived. This involved compulsory parent help. A rota was set up for each week and two parents a day had to help with the children. It worked for parents, children and staff; and parents made friendships there which I know still exist. It was a real community. That is what seems to be lacking in so many instances.
	I believe that parenting skills can be taught and that we should begin to teach them early. We now have citizenship education. What better way is there to be a good citizen than to be a good parent who is not afraid to seek help if required and who knows where to get help? Following my pre-school playgroup stint, I went back to teaching in a comprehensive school where one of the subjects I taught was child development. There were many challenging pupils in those classes. One girl used to specialise in pushing the RE teacher off the piano. But those girls did take child development seriously. I have no proof that they went on to become good parents, but I do know that some of them became nursery nurses. I suspect that their parenting skills were enhanced.
	Of course I believe in a strong role for parents and in consulting them where appropriate. I believe that this Government have done much to improve the lives of families and children and are committed to doing more. We must all maintain a watching brief so that parents and children stay at the centre of our agenda and benefit from the structures and systems that we create.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for initiating this important debate. It is about time that we looked back at some of those other aspects of Every Child Matters and the parenting issue remains important.
	My children were born in the mid-1960s and we lived in south-east London. Early on, I became involved in campaigns to establish better nursery education in that area. One result of that was that the Plowden report became my bible. There were other reasons for that—I worked at the time as a social scientist at the London School of Economics, and it was one of those reports published in the 1960s which took social science seriously and began to develop evidence-based policy.
	I was particularly influenced, when I read the Plowden report, by a volume that mentioned the Red House experiment, which was about disadvantaged families in a northern metropolitan town, where people had gone into the community and sought out those disadvantaged families whose children were not receiving proper love and attention. The parents were taught how to play with their children; how to sing, to read books to them and enjoy life with them—take them to the park to play with them. It struck me, because, in some ways it opened up my eyes to a world about which I knew little—although I had begun to rub shoulders with it in Lewisham. I thought that approach was sensible—that where there was deprivation, and we knew that the children responded so well, we should go out into the community with those measures and try to do something about the problems.
	Out of that Red House experiment emerged another important experiment, which became Home Start. It was started by Margaret Harrison and others. We should also pay tribute to the late Lady Brigstocke, who was involved with Margaret Harrison at a later stage in extending that experiment to other countries. The key to Home Start was not only that it picked up the concept of getting out there into the community, but that it was voluntary. It used the young mums who had been helped by Home Start projects to go out to other homes and teach other mothers how to be good mothers. That was the essence of Home Start, which was the core upon which Sure Start has been built.
	I came across a quotation from Margaret Harrison, who was looking back at the 25 years of Home Start and talking about rolling it out internationally. She stated:
	"Irrespective of geography, education, economics, politics or culture, the needs of families remain the same. Parents, wherever they are, can feel isolated, overwhelmed, exhausted, unwell and inadequate. The power of friendship, of providing one close relationship and a network of friends, is, we are told by social psychologist, Michael Argyle, the best foundation for happiness".
	That has been an important point about Home Start. It has provided parents with friendship and networking as well teaching them how to play with and look after their children.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said, the vast amount of research illustrates the importance of the relationship between children and parents. Good parenting results in better achievements in children. It was summed up by the literature review undertaken by Professor Desforges for the Department for Education and Skills: that after allowing for all the usual factors—social class, income, level of parents' education and so forth—parental interest in children's learning can make a huge difference to children's achievement and adjustment.
	Some of the experiments that have taken place are very moving. There is the PEEP experiment in Oxford; the Peers Early Education Partnership. Its outcomes showed that,
	"children in the PEEP made significantly greater progress in their learning than those in the comparison group, in areas of vocabulary, language comprehension, understanding about books and print, and number concept; in addition, the PEEP children had higher self-esteem in the areas of their feelings about their cognitive and physical competence as well as having higher self-esteem than comparable children whose parents did not take part in the project; the long term effects of PEEP are still unknown".
	It is still running and the longer term evaluation still has to be undertaken.
	One of the issues I found interesting was illustrated by a good seminar held earlier this year by the National Family and Parenting Institute in Portcullis House. It presented work undertaken by the Economic and Social Research Council which pointed to the importance of transitions in the lives of young people. The really vulnerable times of their lives are when they transfer from home to school and from infant to junior schools and so forth.
	I was struck in particular by what was said about adolescent transitions. I wrote notes after the seminar and found them when I was researching material for the debate. Transitions are difficult for parents as well as for children and it is not clear that enough advice is available either about school choices or career options, or to help parents cope with obstreperous youngsters. Why are parenting classes offered only after a young person offends? There is too little acknowledgement from the state that parenting is a tough job.
	Some of the experiments in establishing parent information points are important. The National Family and Parenting Institute has been experimenting with this. It found that:
	"Nearly two-thirds of parents rated the events as 'very helpful'. Nine out of ten parents said that they would recommend the events. The greatest impact was amongst those often described as 'hard-to-reach', e.g. minority ethnic groups and those on low incomes. Parents said that such events increased their: knowledge and awareness of family support services; knowledge of child development issues in general; willingness and readiness to access services; confidence in themselves as parents".
	That is all so important. We must see such services carried forward and continued. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, spoke about the family learning initiative. Indeed, such an initiative is promoted by the Campaign for Learning, the National Institute for Adult and Continuing Education and the Learning and Skills Council. One of the recommendations to come out of the work is that there should be continuing courses and activities which encourage parents to value learning and gain confidence as co-educators. I hope that in response the Minister will tell us what is happening and what is continuing in these campaigns.

Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Northbourne on securing this important debate. He has spent a considerable part of his life championing the vital role of parents and we owe him a great debt.
	Most noble Lords will agree that being a parent is the most important, influential and, above all, satisfying job a person can assume in a lifetime. It is one of crucial importance not just for the parent and the child but for the community as a whole. Yet, sadly, the impression remains that the Government have not quite accepted the need for a full "partnership" role for parents. There was no mention of the role of parents in the Children Bill, for example, until an amendment was accepted in this House, and the Education Bill, which is currently before your Lordships, would appear to reduce parents' involvement in the governance of their children's schooling.
	But I do not want to sound unduly critical because the Government, to their considerable credit, have many good initiatives to help and support parents. Sure Start is a real key to the future. It is key because it is clearly a blueprint of considerable value if rolled out everywhere, but it is already seen as being very effective indeed in the most deprived areas.
	Even more important for this debate, Sure Start is not just a partnership of the statutory and voluntary social service providers, vital though the Government's plans to achieve that are; above all, parents are the crucial part of the Sure Start partnership, and the variety in the individual local programmes reflects just that.
	Indeed, several of the Sure Start centres are rightly presented by the Department for Education and Skills as shining examples of the successful engagement of parents. I shall not repeat something that I was intending to quote because it has already been said by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne.
	However, we should not forget the understanding and learning that parents gain from sharing problems with other parents and professionals. That is important, particularly where the local school is a Sure Start meeting place. Parents who might not have much enjoyed their own schooling can begin to see it in a more positive light. Sure Start is a programme that must continue. I, too, have heard the rumours that it is to end, and I can only hope that the Minister will tell us that I am mistaken.
	Parental participation depends on just how far parents can make time for involvement. With men and women in Britain working the longest hours of any country in the EU, the chances of most parents being available are still fairly slim. More than 40 per cent of those at work are parents of children under the age of 19. Even more importantly, because women continue to be the main carers of children, in 2002 four out of five women whose youngest child was aged between 11 and 15 were at work. Indeed, half the women who work have children under the age of five.
	Here, too, the Government have made some real progress. Equal pay and opportunities are a priority, and increased tax and other allowances for childcare, combined with plans for extended day schools, rightly have been warmly welcomed. But perhaps the Government should go a little further. Why can they not, for example—this has not been explained—include grandparents and other near family members among those eligible for allowances if they are capable of taking on the caring role?
	One of the saddest issues facing us today—it is very much a ticking time bomb—is the increasing number of broken relationships involving children under 18. But, frankly, whether parents are together or separated, there is growing support for involving fathers far more in their children's upbringing and development. That, too, just makes sense. I suspect that we need a whole day's debate on this subject.
	It also highlights the need for a sharing of household duties between the sexes to a point that is considerably more "equal" than the one that exists at present. I am very glad to say that today employers increasingly make part-time and flexible working arrangements available for a wide range of jobs, including those at top executive level. The other recent government decision to give carers the right to flexible work arrangements, unless a convincing reason from the employer to the contrary can be advanced, will undoubtedly help to spread the practice.
	However, the flexibility which does exist is still perceived as being for mothers and not for fathers. I insist that that, too, must change. In a world where technology facilitates a wide range of different work patterns, with longer working lives which sometimes involve caring simultaneously for elderly parents as well as children, sensible employers should be planning all employment on a flexible basis and making it available on demonstrably unisex terms.
	Finally, it is important to end by stressing once again why supporting good parenting must be, and must be seen to be, a government priority. Quite simply, it is a matter of national self-interest because good parenting today helps to prevent the cost of social evils tomorrow. There is endless evidence that the "cycle of deprivation", with its huge social and financial cost, will continue from generation to generation unless successful break-in strategies, such as Sure Start, are devised.
	However, a more encouraging stream of research shows that constructive parental involvement in a child's life—particularly in a child's school life—produces better grades, far less truancy, greater homework completion rates and, most importantly, a much improved attitude and better all-round behaviour.
	So I end, as I began, by agreeing with my noble friend Lord Northbourne. We have to start the support very early in a child's life. He has made that point again and again on previous occasions. And the importance of the parental role needs to be reinforced throughout a child's schooldays.
	Citizenship is now a compulsory part of the national curriculum. But is it helping both girls and boys early enough to think through how, when they themselves are parents, they will see the role and responsibilities, as well as the pleasures, of parenthood? I hope that the Minister can confirm that it is doing just that.

Baroness Linklater of Butterstone: My Lords, I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, who has once again called our attention to that most central element of our society: the role of parents in the welfare of children. It should be a truism that the role of parents is indivisible from children's welfare and therefore at the heart of all services for them. The reason that is such an important subject for debate today is because the role of parents is not apparent in the Government's recent plans for devising and delivering children's services.
	In the Government's Green Paper, Every Child Matters, which has rightly been welcomed, there are a couple of pages that refer specifically to parents and, indeed, affirm that the bond between the child and his or her parents is the most critical influence on a child's life. It refers to a long-term vision and states that:
	"The Government would like to develop more and better universal services, open to all families as and when they need them".
	However, in the extensive consultation period that followed the publication of the Green Paper, the only consulting that involved parents consisted of four focus groups.
	In the subsequent Every Child Matters: Next Steps there is one small paragraph referring to parents, a few lines on page 6 which repeat, in précis form, what was in the original Green Paper. No explicit account is taken of the centrality of the role of parents in the range of proposed services. Parents have effectively been left out. Yet if services are to work for parents and carers, they must be developed through a partnership between the parent and the provider, whether government or otherwise.
	The National Family and Parenting Institute—which has been much referred to this evening, and of which I am a patron—rightly proposes that there should be parent advisory groups in all local and regional children and family services and representation at strategic planning level. I hope that the Government will consider this seriously.
	However, Sure Start, which now has 524 programmes targeted on the most deprived areas, has an emphasis on parenting that is greatly to be welcomed. I am repeating a question from elsewhere in the House, but I hope that the Minister can reassure us that the plans for 2,500 children's centres by 2010, to deliver a range of integrated services, will not result in a cut in local management or in per capita funding. The relationship between these centres and the Sure Start programmes is as yet unclear. Perhaps the Minister will clarify it when he comes to reply.
	The point about parenting is that we all need help at one time or another. We can usefully remind ourselves that that applies as much to the most authoritative professional as it does to the most deprived single parent. The difficulty about seeking help is that parents feel desperately inadequate and anxious at such times, so getting help, even if a parent knows where to get it, can be extremely difficult. All services have to be delivered with sensitivity that does not usurp the authority of the parental role or its importance, and does not supplant it with some external professional authority. Having parental support generally and routinely available, regardless of a family's circumstances or background, is the ideal and, when it is made available on that basis, it is also often the best way of doing valuable preventive work.
	The crucial role of midwives and health visitors here cannot be exaggerated. They have the best possible opportunities for picking up potential problems at an early stage. The support that they can offer is available to all, and the particularly vulnerable parent need not feel that she or he is being singled out. I am delighted to learn that the Chief Nursing Officer is undertaking a review of the health visiting service and I hope that it will be possible greatly to enhance this wonderful service where problems can be identified in a non-stigmatising and universal way.
	Support to parents is most widely available in the early years, but becomes far harder to find as children get older. Yet any parent knows that the teenage years can be the most stressful and difficult of all. Yet any parent knows that it is the teenage years that can be the most stressful and difficult of all. The powerful peer/school culture can distance parents, and issues around drugs, bullying, relationships, pregnancy and running away can be deeply difficult. But, despite these almost universal worries, appropriate, accessible help is not always easy to come by.
	The Connexions service could have a valuable role to play with teenage children at risk in developing appropriate family support models for parents and mentoring for children. That needs to be actively explored.
	For the most vulnerable families there is a tendency for things to be left until real trouble develops, as has already been suggested, which may ultimately be with the law when the question of parenting orders may become the issue. For any parent, being the subject of such an order is really painful, and there are still not enough high-quality providers. Studies show that despite the punitive element the support is positive, but there is a lot of work to be done—and how much better it would be to prevent such situations by earlier intervention.
	Where there are specific issues such as disability and/or mental illness—a growing problem and with increasingly young children—very specific provision is needed. It seems axiomatic that, in devising services to meet such needs, parents' advice should be sought, but that is rare. The evidence is that when parents are involved communication improves, treatment is more effective and efficient because professionals are helped to do their jobs better. The child development centre in Scarborough is one example where disabled parents have significantly improved local health facilities through a greater understanding of their children's needs. Facilities for this sort of dialogue should be routinely available.
	Just under half of all services for children are provided by the voluntary sector; and I would like to pay tribute to the remarkable spread of work that is achieved by a wide range of organisations including, Barnardo's, with which I have been associated in Scotland, whose work with young people at risk I have mentioned many times in your Lordships' House. Its work nationally includes a range of parenting work, including courses, groups, one-to-one and community-based parenting programmes where events are organised with or by parents themselves and parenting orders.
	Dietrich Bonhoffer said:
	"The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children".
	Will the Minister confirm that in future parents will be consulted and involved so that we can all do the best for our children?

Baroness Blood: My Lords, first I declare an interest as a trustee of Barnardo's, both in my own region and nationally. I also take the opportunity to thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for raising what I consider to be one of the most important things we can discuss in the House—how parents can be involved with their children and with their children's lives in school and so on.
	There is a saying:
	"It is generally agreed that the impact of parenting is felt throughout one's lifetime and for succeeding generations. No other form of human interaction can boast such power".
	As has been said earlier tonight, bringing up children is perhaps the most challenging and important task that any of us could undertake. It is truly a job for life, and yet it is not always valued by society. Sometimes it is seen as peripheral to paid work or something we do in our spare time. We also often fail to invest in parents and in giving them the skills and training they need to make successful parents.
	Here I would like to tell noble Lords a story. I had friends who were expecting their first child. They went to all the classes. They had taken in everything and were wild with excitement. The child was born and brought home. The door was closed and they were totally on their own. The child started to cry, and panic set in. What they had not been taught was how to deal with that situation. Within three days both mother and father were physical wrecks.
	Children need so much from their parents—basic physical care, affection, security, stimulation of their potential, guidance and control, responsibility and independence. A child's development is dependent on the quality of the parent/child relationship.
	Today's parents face many additional challenges. For example, children have access to computers, mobile phones and the Internet. All this brings with it its own risks and challenges, some of which parents struggle to understand. Barnardo's Just One Click report highlighted the risk to children from abuse and pornography on the Internet and the action that parents, the police and others need to take to address it.
	In Northern Ireland, parents and children face changing social circumstances. Today in Northern Ireland, 22 per cent of all households with dependent children are headed by a lone parent. Many children belong to families where they have step-parents, step-sisters and step-brothers. In thinking about the role of families and the support that we give them, we must ensure that all families are taken into account. There is also a growing number of ethnic minority families in Northern Ireland. At the last census, 1 per cent of the Northern Ireland population was from an ethnic minority background.
	Those changes in social circumstances mean that we need to listen to parents. Providing the advice and support that they need is all-important. Research has clearly shown that the resilience and success of children in very disadvantaged circumstances has often been due to child-centred parenting, where children are listened to, valued and enabled to overcome disadvantage. It has also shown that the quality of parenting is a highly influential factor in children's development. In 2004, research by the Campaign for Learning showed that parental involvement in children's learning had a bigger effect on their achievement than social background or choice of school.
	However, in disadvantaged communities, such as the one from which I come, it is not always easy for parents to be involved. They may have had some negative school experience themselves; or they may be addressing so many other issues that school does not always seem to be the top priority. That is why organisations such as Barnardo's are working with many local communities to engage with schools and parents and support parents to enable them to be involved in their children's education.
	However—I should like to hear the Minister's answer to this point—in Northern Ireland, we have just been informed that our Children's Fund will finish, with the loss of almost £25 million from work for children. The general cutbacks in children's service funding mean that its future looks very uncertain in Northern Ireland.
	Given that our society expects so much from parents, it is crucial that we involve them in the key decisions that affect them and their children. Parents should be entitled to participate directly in the planning and delivery of services, because the evidence shows that that contributes to both the quality and the effectiveness of those services, as well as creating a sense of accountability among professionals. It is important that parents are involved in a variety of ways and at different stages. For example, parents and children could be directly involved in the service that they are receiving; through needs assessment to identify new services; or to shape the way in which an existing service is delivered.
	However, it is also important that we undertake capacity-building with parents if we are to ask them to give their time, experience and expertise. Often the way that a meeting takes place may be strange to parents from the local community. We must give parents the skills to enable them to participate fully and effectively.
	A model of that that has worked very well in Northern Ireland has been the group conferencing approach by Barnardo's. It has worked with the South-Eastern Education and Library Board to involve parents and children where school exclusion is threatened. Parents and children identify the issues and help to negotiate the outcomes and strategy to meet that. That has effectively ensured that the young person who would otherwise have been excluded has remained at school. Of the young people who took part in that initiative, 71 per cent felt that their behaviour at school was better; and 50 per cent now say that they have a better understanding of and relationship with their school.
	There are barriers to parental involvement that must be addressed. They sometimes include a poor relationship between service users and professionals. We need resources and funding to support parental involvement and not expect parents to provide all that free. Physical, language and time barriers can prevent parental involvement, and those should also be addressed.
	I should also like to address the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, about male parents. I am working on a programme at home at the moment, but we are finding resources for fathers very hard to obtain. We need seriously to consider that.
	In Northern Ireland, a pilot scheme has been undertaken by one of the health and social services boards in which a group of disabled children and young people were supported to become involved in the children's service planning process. Some noble Lords may have met that group of children and young people when they came to your Lordships' House for the launch of the Barnardo's publication, Have Your Say. They had some clear things to say about what would make their lives better. The challenge is to listen to those views and engage in a dialogue about how to respond.
	Those who plan and deliver services to children and parents stand only to benefit from their involvement, from drawing on their valuable knowledge, and experience that can make services more effective. However, if that is to happen, professionals must acknowledge that parents and children have their unique experiences to comment on and that these can only increase the effectiveness of the service that they deliver. Also required are capacity-building for parents and children to enable them to participate and the resources to make that possible. Enabling parents and children to participate is not the cheap option, but in the long term it is the most valuable one.

Baroness Greengross: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, on this very timely debate. I want to concentrate on three interrelated themes about parenting: first, encouraging healthy lifestyles; secondly, the role of grandparents and wider kin; and, thirdly, Sure Start.
	I declare an interest as a co-chair of the Alliance for Health & the Future, which is very much about young people's attitudes to health throughout life and as they get older. One cause of our ever-lengthening life expectancy is better health. But, as we know, some children could be the first generation to live for less long than their parents. This is the first time that that has happened for hundreds of years.
	Recently I met Life Education Centres, which promotes healthy living to parents and their children, helping to tackle issues such as poor diet, alcohol abuse, drugs and smoking. It stresses the importance of role models, especially of parents to their children. Involving parents is essential; they must be involved in what their children are doing, learning and indeed eating, particularly at school.
	I declare an interest as the chair of the All-Party Group on Grandparents and extended kin. I was very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, gave a very inclusive definition of parenting. We must remember the contribution of grandparents when we think about parenting because nearly half of all people aged 54 and over are grandparents, though many are younger. They may be grandparents while still parents of teenagers. About 65,000 are in that position.
	Children, on the whole, look up to and value their grandparents. In a survey, 78 per cent considered them important figures in their lives. I rather hope that my nine grandchildren have that sort of view about me, but I am not sure. Sometimes grandparents can be very successful mediators or arbitrators between parents and difficult teenagers—that is just one job that they can do quite well. What is changing is that an increasing number of grandparents are parenting for a second time, often informally but also formally, following a court order or suchlike.
	The Government and wider society must recognise that with a shift in policy. That is why I welcomed the DfES consultation last summer on extending protection and broadening support for childcare. But I was disappointed that the consultation made clear at the outset that the Government would not allow parents to pay their relatives using government child tax credits. That is short-sighted and unfair because the Government are precluding some parents from using the best people to look after their children: their own parents or other extended kin, who have, after all, direct and valuable personal experience of doing that job. Often those involved are on a low income; in such cases there is a social reason for giving them extra financial support.
	I do not suggest that the Government should interfere with informal arrangements. Fifty-eight per cent of parents used grandparents for childcare at some point in the past year, and about a quarter of grandparents help on a weekly basis. We need to encourage and applaud that. According to the DfES figures, 93 per cent were unpaid, and I am sure that most would want to remain that way. But some grandparents or extended kin may be of working age, registered as childminders and meeting all the regulatory conditions, perhaps with the family on a low income. Is it not sensible in those limited circumstances to allow a parent to use the child tax credit to pay the grandparent rather than employ someone potentially unknown to them? It seems common sense.
	There was an interesting item on "Woman's Hour" on 25 January. A lone mother of five children was interviewed. She did shift work for the Post Office and received £73 in child tax credit, which she spent on childcare for her two youngest children. The balance for childcare cost 30 per cent of her remaining take-home pay. Her eldest married daughter was expecting a baby. The mother in question wanted to look after the baby when it arrived, but she could not afford to because her daughter's tax credit could not go to her. The Minister's predecessor wrote to me on 31 July about this issue and made a very sound point. She said:
	"the Government does not want to disturb family relationships".
	He said that it might,
	"distort the pattern of care which is arguably not the province of government".
	However, I am proposing that this might happen only in very limited circumstances where the grandparent or extended kin is of working age and registered and where the family is on low income and needs additional support.
	The Minister may say that it could be awkward if the Government declared a grandparent unsuitable to look after a child, but it might be worth that awkwardness. Should not the child's interests come first? I thought that that was what child protection was all about. I hope that the Minister can look on my suggestion a little more sympathetically and perhaps more flexibly than before.
	My final point relates to Sure Start and links my first two points: healthy living, and involving grandparents and the wider family carers. I would like to see Sure Start's reach extended formally to include grandparents and wider kin. In answer to a Written Question from me on 13 December 2004, the Minister's department stated that it did not know how many Sure Start schemes formally involved grandparents, though it acknowledged that most probably did. Extending Sure Start's reach would build on the excellent work which has been piloted by the Grandparents' Association and which encourages grandparent and toddler groups. It is also the place in which messages about healthy living and successful parenting can be reinforced.
	I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, in his choice of title for the debate. We must involve parents more in the design and delivery of services for children. That also means parents being able, should they wish it, to involve their parents, with appropriate support and information. That would help them to achieve the best for their children and indeed all our children. We have to change or adapt public policy to reflect today's reality.

The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, I join noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Northbourne for again calling our attention to the role of parents and the welfare of children. I shall concentrate on a matter that he has often raised in the past; that is, the development of children in their earliest years. We are learning more and more about the neurobiology of children and how their relationship with their mother in that first year or so of life can shape the way in which their brains function for the rest of their life. It is crucial that childcare at that time is of the right kind.
	I welcome the aim of the Government's childcare strategy. I recently had the pleasure of hearing Margaret Hodge, the Minister for Children, address the All-Party Group on Childcare. Some of her comments struck me in particular. She wanted to see, in the early-year settings, a large proportion of workers with a qualification similar to that of a primary school teacher. That is an important step forward. She spoke of the pedagogic model that is used on the Continent—the social educator model—and of what she was learning from that area of work. Staff there have two to three years of training at a tertiary or university level to work in these settings. That seems very welcome.
	I too welcome what the Government have done with Sure Start. We have heard about the successes of that and about some concerns about the future. Last year, I had the pleasure of visiting three nurseries in this local authority of Westminster. It was a great pleasure to see the good work that is going on, to meet the nursery workers, to hear about the training with which they were being provided and generally to talk to providers and to people who work in the media in this area.
	It was clear that there is a deep concern, which is recognised in the Government's childcare strategy, that much childcare provision is not very good. The childcare workforce consists mainly of young, unskilled, poorly paid women, who have had little education. Of course, the childcare strategy seeks to address that. Currently, regrettably, much available childcare is not of a quality that we would wish.
	Last year, I had the pleasure of watching a video, which showed best-quality childcare in a therapeutic setting. A young three year-old boy arrived in a kindergarten. He had been neglected over a long period of time. He drove his tricycle into another child, was a menace and a terror and was disliked by all the other children. I saw the work of the highly-skilled nursery teacher, who constantly set boundaries and worked with the child. She presented his case to a group of approximately 10 childcare specialists. She spoke at length about how he was doing and what they were hoping to do further with him. She gave much thought to the quality of care that the child needed to progress. By the end of his stay at the kindergarten, he was the most-liked child in the group and he was thriving.
	My concern is to get the balance of childcare right. We know that too many children arrive at school hardly able to speak. As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said, some children may have never seen a book in their lives. We know that if parents are in employment, it is more likely that their children will be in employment when they reach that age. So there are positive reasons to encourage parents into work and, of course, children will also be taken out of poverty.
	As much available childcare is of a poor quality and a good childcare experience in the first one or two years of life is of crucial importance, one wants to be very clear about the messages that are being sent out. One wishes to avoid giving any impression to parents that perhaps they may be better in work than caring for their children. Some parents obviously lack confidence in their parenting. It is very important to avoid inadvertently reinforcing that.
	J Belsky, an eminent academic in this area, was involved in the evaluation of the Sure Start project. He considered the American investigation of early child care by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a study which longitudinally followed 1,300 children and their families in 10 different American communities. It states that,
	"a variety of features of care . . . increased the rate of insecure attachment. These included more than 10 hours of care per week, more than a single child-care arrangement across the first 15 months of life, and lower quality child care".
	The risks associated with that relate to,
	"adjustment, particularly aggression and non-compliance, during the toddler, preschool and early primary school years".
	Belsky made the comment that,
	"even small effects, when experienced by many children, may have broad-scale consequences".
	Therefore, it is important to get the right balance between encouraging parents into employment and making it possible for those who wish to be in employment to be employed, while valuing their role as parents. Most primary carers are mothers, who should be valued as mothers as well. In the first year of a child's life, of course, some mothers need to work for various reasons. I should like to ask the Minister for reassurance that there will not be a sense of them being particularly encouraged to do so.
	My noble friend Lord Northbourne referred to Relate, a charity that does very important work with couples and families. It faces a difficult problem because its sessions incur costs of £40 an hour, but it gets back on average only £14 an hour. It wants to reach out to poorer families, who can perhaps provide only £4 or £5 an hour. I will write to the Minister, who I hope will be able to look at this matter.

Lord Dearing: My Lords, I join in the thanks to my noble friend Lord Northbourne for introducing this debate. Such well researched contributions serve this House well. It will be no surprise to noble Lords that I wish to concentrate my remarks on the parental contribution to education. I know that the Government recognised its importance in their first year in the document, Excellence in Schools:
	"Parents are a child's first and most enduring teacher".
	Last year, in Every Child Matters: The Next Steps, they continued that theme with the words:
	"Parenting is the most important influence on children and young people's outcomes".
	The document set out a timetabled list of actions, not the least of which was the provision of £25 million for a parenting fund. There is also no doubt that all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate are saying to the Government, "We are with you on this". My comments seek to help a little to maximise the effectiveness of what the Government are aiming to do.
	My first point relates to the importance of an adequate research base on which to formulate policy, a point also made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. I know that this is a point of concern for the Government because they commissioned two studies, one published in 2003 by Professor Charles Desforges, to which my noble friend Lord Northbourne has already referred, and the second published last year by the Policy Research Bureau. Both studies reflect very detailed research.
	Somewhat to one's concern, Professor Desforges summarised his observations by saying:
	"We seem to know as much in principle about parental involvement and impact on school achievement as Newton knew about the physics of motion in the 17th century. What we seem to lack [and what he lacked at that stage] is the engineering science to put our knowledge into practice. We need urgently to learn how to apply the knowledge we already have in the field".
	He goes on to suggest that there has been a lot of creative action and commitment that is greatly appreciated by clients, but that,
	"the evaluations [of them] are so technically weak that it is impossible on the basis of publicly available evidence to describe the scale of impact on pupils' achievement".
	A year on, the Policy Research Bureau is more reassuring, but from memory I think that it identified some 15 items where the research basis for policy was still lacking. So I urge the Government to get on with it, but make sure every time that there is a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of any initiative.
	My second point is to stress the need for the Government to concentrate action where it is most needed. From my reading of the five-year strategy, which is quite moving on the subject, I am sure that they will focus on areas of social deprivation. Professor Desforges says in his evaluation that the impact on educational achievement of different levels of parental involvement at primary school is much bigger than differences associated with variations in the quality of schools. The extent of parental involvement is strongly correlated with social class, and that in turn the level of that parental involvement is reinforced by the child's level of achievement. The risk is all too obvious of a downward spiral of low involvement leading to low achievement, leading in turn to even less involvement. That may be reinforced by parents' low aspirations affecting how children do in school.
	In his report published yesterday, the Chief Inspector of Schools emphasised the correlation between social class and achievement. He has compared us with other countries and concluded that, sadly, the correlation is too strong.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Blood, referred to parents living in poor housing, in receipt of low and insecure incomes, and perhaps facing unemployment. We must ensure that money is provided where it is most needed, so that parents are able to give to their children what they want to give.
	My third point begins with a quotation from the five-year strategy:
	"Social care, childcare and education have not been thought of as an integrated approach to helping children to do well . . . Children do not distinguish their need based on which agencies run which services—neither should we".
	I cannot forbear to pick up on a point made during the Committee stage of the Education Bill. One was commenting on the wisdom of the Government erecting a strong ring-fence around the government money made available to local authorities for education.
	Recognising what the Government say in their own five-year strategy, is there not a case for making possible some breaches in the ring fence so that a holistic approach can be adopted in areas of social deprivation, possibly with the direct approval of the Secretary of State? I know what the Government want to do—they want to make sure that the money for education goes to it—but if the problem is fundamentally also a social problem there must be a holistic approach.
	My associated point is that I urge the Government, in thinking through their policy of facilitating the expansion of successful schools, to weigh the effect that could have on schools that may not be doing well in areas of social disadvantage. If we are to have a holistic approach to the education of children and young people in such areas, we need to have schools in the midst of communities, familiar to parents, where they rub shoulders with other parents with whom they empathise and feel at ease.
	Busing the children to a successful school in a middle-class community is not the best answer. Bringing excellence to the people is a much better approach for the well-being of the communities and for the cause of effective parental involvement in their children's education.
	To sum up, the Government have got the right intentions: secure the research base of policy; concentrate the money where it is most needed; and adopt the holistic approach advocated in the Government's five-year strategy.

Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and congratulate him on introducing this important debate, which has been both interesting and very wide-ranging. It has demonstrated the wide range of interests and expertise around the House.
	The noble Lord and my noble friend Lady Linklater quoted the Government's statement in Every Child Matters that the bond between the child and his or her parents is the most critical influence on a child's life. I am sure that all of us here agree with that. It has underpinned the debate today.
	It is all the more important, therefore, that all parents are supported and consulted in every matter relating to their children. Not all parents have the advantage of turning to their own parents—the grandparents—for their support, and so they need to get help from somewhere else. I recognise the important points made about grandparents by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross.
	Some people believe that just because most of us are biologically capable of becoming parents we all know how to do it well. Nothing could be further from the truth, especially in a situation where our children are growing up in a world very different from the one we knew as children, particularly with regard to the freedom to go out to play safely. My noble friend Lady Sharp has emphasised the importance of play.
	However, no one knows a child better than its parents and no one is better placed to ensure its welfare. Therefore the state should be a benevolent guardian angel—an enabler, a supporter—but should never compel or take over the parenting role except where the child needs the state's protection or the parent is unable to fulfil the usual parental role.
	As we all know, sadly, the state does not make a very good parent anyway—reference the terrible educational outcomes for children in care and the number of them that land up in trouble with the law, as mentioned by several noble Lords. Therefore it makes sense to do everything possible to keep a child with its parents and stop it having to go into care in the first place.
	We must therefore do two things. The first is to try to ensure a good start for every baby and its parents; and the second is to support families, especially when they are having problems. To do all this well you need to involve and consult parents, and my noble friend Lady Linklater has proposed a structure for doing this at local level.
	I cannot stress enough the importance of starting well—the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, made the same point—and that is why my party has recently published its proposals on maternity pay; to pay every first mother the equivalent of the minimum wage for the first six months of her maternity leave if that is more than she is already entitled to. This will enable more new mothers to take their statutory leave and to spend that first vital six months or more bonding with her child with less financial stress. Of course, it has long been our policy to allow couples to share their parental leave between mother and father, even if the Guardian newspaper has not noticed.
	My noble friend Lady Sharp mentioned the PEEP project. The early years of a child's life are so important, and investment in them is cost-effective for the state as well as civilised and humane for children and their parents. That is why we applaud the Government's Sure Start scheme and welcome its roll-out, if that is to be so, as well as the excellent work done by the voluntary Home Start programme, about which my noble friend Lady Sharp spoke so passionately.
	However, we take issue with the Government's children's trust fund scheme, believing that the £250 or £500 per child would be much better invested in the early years to reduce class sizes to 20 at key stage 1. That is much more cost-effective than giving an 18 year-old teenager a gift which will be a drop in the ocean when you consider what his further education will cost him. Children are all so different. They need more personal attention when they are young. I know that the parents we consulted when developing this policy agreed with its wisdom.
	We also agree with the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about the importance of well trained childcare and early years workers. When a child goes to school, there is a tendency to say, "Now it's the job of the teachers". But it has been emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, that the schools that are most successful are those where the parents are vitally concerned with the children's education and which make every effort to involve and consult them. That is why I regret the Government's intention to scrap the annual parents' meeting and report. We must have, in education legislation, at least a minimum that schools must do to encourage parents to take part in the life of the school, become governors, and so on. We do not need to worry about the ones which do it well but the ones which need to be told the minimum they need to do.
	Talking about schools, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that we could do more in the curriculum to prepare young people for relationships and parenthood, when it eventually happens. Glossy adverts for baby products showing happy bouncing babies and beautiful unstressed mums with hands as soft as their face give the wrong impression of how hard, but worth while, the job is. The noble Baroness, Lady Blood, told us about some parents who were physical wrecks after only three days.
	Teenagers need to know how tough it is to bring up a baby, especially alone. If they did, there might not be quite so many unwanted teenage pregnancies, and young parents might be better prepared. Young parents living locally could be involved in this sort of personal and social education; I know that that happens here and there.
	However, we need resources diverted from areas that are not such a good investment into early years and universal support for parents. My noble friend Lady Linklater called for this as well. We say "universal" because problems within families are not restricted to those suffering some disadvantage. If parental support services were widely available and used by all parents, as they are in Sweden, there would be no stigma and enormous benefits to families and the nation. But we must be sure not to fall into the trap of being too prescriptive about good parenting. There are as many models of good parenting as there are happy families.
	As with Sure Start, multi-agency working is by far the most effective approach in relation to these services. In developing them, we must make sure it is a bottom-up process, and ask parents what they want and need. It is striking that some parents who have had to undertake parenting classes as part of a parenting order, as mentioned by my noble friend Lady Linklater, are delighted and ask, "Why did things have to come to this before I got this sort of help? Why couldn't I have had it before everything went pear-shaped?". They are also surprised at how inclusive such classes often are. It is more about parents sharing their problems and working out solutions rather than having some so-called expert tell them what to do with their children. We need more of that, and we need it earlier.
	It is very important that parents know what is available, so widespread dispersal of information is essential. I look forward to the Minister's response to the questions of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, on that subject.
	I know that when resources are short, it makes most sense to target them towards the most difficult areas. That is why support for parents having relationship difficulties should be a priority. Apart from the human cost, we all know how costly to the taxpayer are services to support families that have broken up. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, pointed that out. When a family is on the verge of break-up, relationship counselling, mediation and family group conferencing, where the children too may be heard, are vital and may even prevent the break-up. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, reminded us once more of the importance of consulting children in those situations.
	If a break-up does occur, the welfare of the child must be protected. Nothing is more stressful for a child than the break-up of its parents, and nothing contributes more to child poverty. That is why the Child Support Agency needs to be scrapped forthwith and the responsibility given to the Inland Revenue. If the Government really want to involve parents, they should ask those who have had dealings with the CSA how good it is. If the Government listen to the answer, they will surely scrap it tomorrow.
	In relation to child contact, parenting plans are a good idea, but the Government need to take a lead from practitioners such as Parenting 2000, which is made up of experienced parent practitioners, and pay more attention to the success of that restorative practice approach.
	I believe that none of your Lordships has referred to the need for inclusion of the parents of disabled and SEN children. I have received a briefing from the groups that represent those families; they point out that disabled children are often excluded and draw attention to the fact that if you get it right for disabled children, you are more likely to get it right for all children. I was particularly struck by their plea to involve fathers in service planning. Meetings too often take place during the day when fathers are at work, so they feel peripheral to the whole process. The noble Baronesses, Lady Howe and Lady Blood, both made appeals for the involvement of fathers in general.
	In genuinely congratulating the Government on what they already do to involve and consult parents, I hope that we will be forgiven tonight for highlighting where more needs to be done, and for asking for more to be done.

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for instigating this extremely important debate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has said, there have been some excellent contributions, which have been as wide-ranging across children's affairs as children have interests.
	All noble Lords who have spoken have been conscious of the importance of a cohesive family life and the vital role played by parents in providing the love, stability and support for their children as they grow through their various stages to independence. We all appreciate the enormous pleasure derived from our children, their ups and downs, their development, their social lives, their educational achievements, the fun associated with them and their friends—and we usually get to know a lot of those—as well as the heart-stopping moments when things go wrong.
	As the former chairman of a social services committee, and currently as a family panel magistrate, I know that not all families are able to provide the care that children need. In some cases, they wittingly or not positively blight their children's lives, health and future. The latter is the more extreme area, and the one in which statutory support and intervention is most often needed and in which the state, in the form of local authorities, comes to share responsibility for the upbringing of a child or children. While many of these children will stay at home with their families, some need the care of foster parents and some are ultimately adopted. As the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, pointed out, adoptive parents are parents—and I could point out that foster parents are parents, too. Therefore, we must include all those in our definition of parents.
	These children are, fortunately, in a minority. Families, however defined in general, have very differing requirements and needs throughout their children's young lives. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has drawn attention to the Government's children's strategy, Every Child Matters. Indeed, other noble Lords have referred to it, too. It is an excellent title and one with which few would disagree. The noble Lord invoked research which backs up the widely held view that children need a strong family life, that the bonds and loving attachments help them fulfil their potential, and that those from homes with two parents are often more successful than where there is just one mother or father trying to fulfil all the tasks which are more easily and readily done by two.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Blood, pointed to the high percentage of single parent families in Northern Ireland. However, that does not apply to Northern Ireland alone but to this country as well, although I believe that here the relevant figure is about 18 per cent. That situation brings its own problems.
	As I have suggested, some families require more help than others. Some are completely self-sufficient, but others less so. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, spoke of the complications caused by non-involved parents. Those with children with disabilities, for example, need special consideration.
	The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, rightly raises the question of what means are best adopted to assist those who need them to access services the state can provide. I am sure that the Minister will answer him but I want to raise the question of what is the role of the state in providing flexible support for families, perhaps in the instance of one parent staying at home to look after his or her child and finding that an economic struggle, or parents who must go to work either for economic or personal reasons and need care for their children. Should the state be the provider of resources, financial or facilities?
	The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, spoke of HomeStart. To some extent the Government have answered the question that I asked through their Sure Start programme. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, asked the Minister whether Sure Start would continue. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and other noble Lords, drew attention to the great importance of the whole Sure Start programme. However, it seems to me certain from the announcements that have been made that while Sure Start may continue in some form it will be scooped up in the Government's unnerving proposals to make universal childcare a new arm of the welfare state, with extended school places from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., the creation of children's centres, early education for all two year-olds, free nursery education for all three and four year-olds and much else of an interventionist nature.
	Jill Kirby from the Centre for Policy Studies, the author of, Choosing to be Different—Women, Work and the Family, has raised the question whether that strategy is in the best interests of children, and particularly whether the rationale behind the Chancellor's policies—for, strangely, this policy on childcare came from the Treasury—is to get more mothers of young children into full-time employment. It is a strategy which, while in the best interests of some children and families, may not be in the interests of others.
	Research undertaken by the Government-sponsored project on the effective provision of pre-school education, cited by Jill Kirby, shows a complex picture but suggests that those children who have experienced high levels of daycare, either in a nursery or by a childminder, before the age of three were more likely to have behavioural problems than those cared for within their families. As the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, pointed out, the engagement of parents in education and constructive activity is the most important determinant of a child's outcomes, irrespective of social background, and the best pre-school experiences are those with a high level of parental involvement.
	As has also been demonstrated, the corollary to this is that children who suffer parental neglect can benefit from being placed in daycare facilities, as do those who are deprived of attention and stimulation in their own homes, or where their mothers are failing to cope. So there is justification for the view that provided care is appropriate in some circumstances.
	As the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, pointed out, Sure Start programmes have demonstrated that parental involvement, both in their activities and in their governance, is crucial to their success. A number of noble Lords referred to the success of Sure Start. It is depressing that parental involvement in the governance of children's centres does not seem to be part of the protocol.
	Good staff are no substitute for parental care; and as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, pointed out, in many cases the standard of the staff is not appropriate to the care that they are being asked to give. The choice of where a child spends their early days—at home or in nursery—may be limited by circumstances. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, pointed out, the state should stay at arm's length from that: a help if needed; a friendly shoulder if needed; but not a director. For those who must work, perhaps the Government should wonder whether taking rather less of their taxes and leaving them to make decisions about what they do might be a sensible way forward. The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, drew attention to the tax credit scheme, which could be turned and used for care by grandparents, which is a vital area that has been largely ignored.
	Good parental involvement in all aspects of children's lives is fundamental to their future. Before closing, I want to reinforce the matter raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in the brief that we were sent by Mencap. Unusually, the noble Lord, Lord Rix, is not in his place, so we must carry the torch for him today. It is relevant to this debate. There is a necessity to involve parents in the design and delivery of services for disabled children. It is as true of other children as well, but disabled children require special consideration to ensure that they receive prompt healthcare assessments and treatment. The inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream provision, and an assessment of its advantages and limitations, is another area where parents must be involved.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to ensuring that fathers are included, and that was one of the main concerns in the Mencap brief, that sometimes fathers believe themselves to be "peripheral parents". It is sad that any father should feel excluded in any way from discussions on, or details of, the care of their child. This is an area in which the state has a perfectly proper role to play, but it must be sensitive and responsive to individual needs.
	In Sure Start, children's centres, extended school hours, care provision, children's trusts, the Children Act, the Children's Commissioner and the child trust fund, the Government have embarked on a huge and unprecedented programme of intervention in childcare. Today's debate has demonstrated, if it needed to be, the profound importance of families in the large picture. I hope that the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, will receive answers with which he will be satisfied, and that the Minster and the Government will take notice of the many important things that have been said tonight.

Lord Filkin: My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, secured this debate for us, because it gives me an opportunity to engage with him, and with the House, hopefully in confidential fashion, with where we are in responding to the question that was explicit in his speech. Every Child Matters made the clear statement of how central parents are to good outcomes for children. The noble Lord was essentially asking how that story was being developed and delivered in practice. I will try to engage with that question in my response.
	First, we started—as the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, would want us to—by asking the researchers to tell us what we know from research about where parents have the most impact on those five outcomes. Officials have done a very good review of that for me internally, which is pretty clear in a number of areas. In terms of safety, it is pretty obvious where parental behaviour interconnects; we know that without me labouring it. The research evidence on health—on the influence of parents on eating, smoking and alcohol use, and of parents' mental health on that of children—is massively strong about the connection.
	On enjoyment and achievement—I hope that I can use those shorthand terms; many noble Lords will know what I mean by them—the parental involvement in children's education has a strong and lasting impact. There have been a number of references to Charles Desforges's quite brilliant summation of research. To talk to him about that research is equally stimulating. He is very clear about how powerful parental involvement is. We know that economic well-being, in terms of parental attitudes and expectations through the medium of educational attainment and the ambition of the child, has an enormous impact.
	I shall come back later to making a contribution. The influence of parental behaviour and circumstances—particularly maternal—during very early life stages has a strong effect on the development of anti-social behaviour patterns. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is right about the importance of secure attachment in those very early months, and what it does to the life chances of the child. I cannot do that justice in the limited time that I have. We also know that other wider-ranging factors affect parents' ability to parent—poverty, adult relationships, substance misuse and their own mental or ill health.
	Next, we have researched what parents want. We know that they do not only want help in a crisis—when they are screaming for it—as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and others have said. They want preventive help as well. They want to be treated with respect, as partners, and as the shapers of services rather than simply passive recipients. They want services that listen to and involve them, and want fathers included as well as mothers. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and others are absolutely right on that—how it is done is important, as well as what is done.
	I shall spend a few minutes on what we already have in place and what is planned. Then I shall seek to answer a number of questions, although not all of them, and focus on the kernel of the key matters on which we are focusing. There will be an opportunity for the House—not now, but later—to ask whether we are right on those focuses, and whether our mindset on them is right.
	The contribution of the voluntary and community sector is massively important, as has been signalled by a number of noble Baronesses. We currently spend about £58 million in the Family Division on a range of services and support. Most of that finds expression into the voluntary sector. For example, the parenting fund supports 139 different projects. One of them is Parentline Plus; most of us recognise its excellence.
	I shall talk about what has already been planned. The five-year strategy for children put up clear markers about the centrality of parents in children's centres and extended schools, developing more coherent services to support and involve them. As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and others signalled, the workforce must be properly trained to involve parents in service design and delivery. That is in place, and before long we shall publish a children's workforce strategy that will start to put some flesh on those bones.
	A number of noble Lords referred to Every Child Matters, which again acknowledges the central role of parents. It promotes a way of working that emphasises listening to children, young people and their families. It is quite hard work to shift public services so that they understand and internalise that, because it is not in the top-down traditions of much service delivery. We have one superb example in the department, which is the early support programme for families with disabled children. It has been developing a model of working with parents and getting them to articulate what package of support they want for themselves and their children, better to address their disability. The early evidence of that is superb, but we need to roll out that methodology and way of working wider.
	Let me race on. Regarding the voluntary sector, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said, stability of funding and good commissioning is crucial to maximise the contribution that they make.
	I shall not address all of the questions put by noble Lords, or I shall not do any of them justice. Is the objective to make parents work or to raise their children? I do not mean to be glib, but, essentially, we are helping families to choose how best to balance work and family life. Some of the actions we are taking increase the power of those choices. Fathers now have more choice and more support than ever before in balancing childcare with work. They have a right to two weeks' paid paternity leave. Fathers of children under six and of disabled children have a new right to apply to work flexibly. That point addresses one of the questions asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. Critically, we have also announced, certainly to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and others, our intention to introduce 12 months' paid maternity leave for all mothers by the end of the next parliament, if we are spared. That would be partly commutable to a father if they wished. We could not be clearer on that commitment.
	We certainly do not intend to make relationship education compulsory in all schools, but personal, social and health education (PSHE) courses about the different styles of relationship can be taught at key stage 2, about the role and feelings of parents and carers at key stage 3 and about the nature and importance of marriage for family life and the upbringing of children at key stage 4. We have significantly increased funding to Home Start and home visiting programmes for parents who have at least one child under five.
	There were many questions about Sure Start. Could you conceive that we would seek to damage or reduce Sure Start, which has been one of the brilliant jewels of success for the Government and has been recognised by families? We do not intend to do so, thus I hope that I can set at rest the minds of the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe and Lady Linklater, and a number of other speakers. Sure Start's budget will more than double between now and 2007–08. One of its key principles is that parents and children should have access to services that are tailored flexibly, according to their needs and circumstances. We want parents to continue to be involved in the running of the services, with governance arrangements to reflect that. Perhaps I may send noble Lords a further note on that matter.
	The involvement of fathers and the shift in society that makes fathers more actively and emotionally involved with their children is among the great, positive movements of our society. We see the down side of that in the increase in rows about contact, but paternal involvement is an enormous, positive asset. Therefore, Sure Start local programmes have a strong emphasis on engaging fathers, and some of the paid paternity leave measures are part of that. That is a theme of government policy. We must continue to recognise that one should not gender stereotype—there are two parents and each can contribute more.
	I shall irritate the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, and apologise to them for doing so. I shall not engage in a debate on the Education Bill here and now. I am delighted to say that we shall have many other happy days and opportunities to do that. I am not being flippant and they will understand why, because time is so limited and there are further important matters that I wish to address.
	Similarly, I shall write to the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, regarding the important points she made about grandparents. I wish to reflect on them, but I do not want to raise her hopes that she will get a different answer than last time, but at least I shall do her the justice of reflecting a little on that. Regarding the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, about adoptive parents and foster parents—they are part of the definition of parents to which the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, referred, and they must be within our mindset. It should not relate only to blood parents, for very good reasons.
	I should also say to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that we are actively involving practitioners in parenting plans. I had a superb meeting with about 20 of them this morning for about an hour and a half and I have threatened them with another meeting in about a month's time, so they will not get away lightly.
	I have outlined what we have done so far and what we have signposted. But the heart of the question is: what else needs to be done over and above all of those things? Perhaps I may leave with the House three questions upon which we are focusing and noble Lords can tell me whether they are right and—even better—what the answers might be. The first question is: knowing that virtually all parents need access to advice and information at some stage of the difficult and exciting job of bringing up a child, what should be the nature of information and advice to parents, with particular focus on transition points? We know that good things are already being done. Parentline Plus is a clear example, but 100,000 calls a year must be required, given that there are about 40 million parents. In response to the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Linklater, one question we are struggling with and engaging in is the nature of information and the provision of advice and support at national and local levels. We want to do that without moving into the silly nanny-state nonsense.
	Secondly, there is the Charles Desforges question, which is one of the reasons I have been pleased to talk and listen to him. If we know that some parents' parenting style—their behaviour, ambition and parenting pattern—so affects the intellectual development and ambition of the child in education, more so than the differences between schools, to have a model of educational improvement which is solely focused on the production plant of schools is self-evidently lopsided. The question with which we are struggling, therefore, is: how could one help some parents to be better at parenting? Unless we answer that, we shall never fulfil our ambition to close the educational attainment between different social classes in our society. What we are seeing—and I know that one is not allowed to use hand signals for Hansard—is that happening and not that happening. That will fool them, won't it? That matters because it is obviously central to our ambition and the work of Charles Desforges is crucial there.
	Thirdly, one of the most interesting and difficult issues is the convergence of research and knowledge recently on what happens in the early months of life. By that I mean the convergence between the child development and attachment work; the psychotherapeutic knowledge and insights; and the neuroscience understanding of what happens to the brain's development and the development of the social brain. In other words, in the first 12 months of life, the child's patterns of behaviour to other human beings and their own feelings are massively influenced by the ways in which the parents behave towards him. That is not just some psychoanalytic theory; the neuroscientists know it and they can track it and the evidence is there scientifically.
	What we also know, and what I am engaging on in discussion with academics and practitioners, is when the parenting is not "good enough", to use the John Bolby phrase, the impact of that on some significant patterns of the child's behaviour. That focuses more on hard-end rather than on the mass. Clearly, there is evidence that if the early behaviour relationship between the child and the mother is dysfunctional so that the child does not have good emotional development, it affects the propensity to behaviour problems in school and to the propensity to a pattern of behaviour in school which leads to poor learning and exclusion and therefore educational failure. These things increase the propensity that the child will display anti-social behaviour in wider society and a potentiality for drifting into criminality. It is not a crude but a complex and varied problem, and there is a relationship between what happens in these situations. Obviously, so much of what the state does focuses on dealing with the symptoms of problems when they manifest themselves either in the classroom, or in the neighbourhood, or in the criminal justice system. We must have an understanding of and reflect on some of the earlier causations in the first 12 months and in the early years.
	We will not find simple, clear scientific answers to this because the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, is right. The longitudinal studies have not been done, and Charles Desforges is rightly scathing about the fact that we innovate but we do not track.
	In that situation, when we will not be able to know exactly which interventions will work, it seems to point to an argument for some serious forms of pathfinder experimentation. One then at least constructs some views which seem to be plausible in terms of what might help shift behaviour. One does so in a controlled way, studies it and afterwards evaluates it. One then tries to build on that to move forward.
	I do not want to raise hopes that we are suddenly about to crack mental health, anti-social behaviour, crime and disorder and so forth. On the other hand, to have no thinking about what happens in the relationship between the parent and the child and the influence of that relationship on those issues would clearly be a lopsided policy perspective on the part of government. That is why I, my officials and my ministerial colleagues are so interested in reflecting on these issues at present—perhaps around the three areas that I have indicated.
	I am in serious danger of doing something that I have never done before, which is to come to the end of my speech in good time. I think that I shall cut and run at this point, but I should be pleased to have further discussions on these issues with any Members of the House if they would be interested in doing so. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for stimulating a very interesting and important debate.

Lord Northbourne: My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister and to everyone who has spoken this evening. I shall speak for only about one minute because I can see that the vultures are there waiting for us to go away.
	What fascinated me about the debate was that we were all singing from the same hymn book. It is exciting to find in this Chamber so many experts, coming from different backgrounds, who see the picture in the same way. It is particularly delightful to find that, on the whole, the Minister is thinking along the same lines.
	I was particularly interested in the concept of the development of the social brain. If any of your Lordships are interested in the development of the social brain of middle-class teenagers, I commend a programme called "Brat Camp" on Monday evenings on Channel 4. Not only is it very funny, it is also quite interesting.
	I shall not try to answer any of the specific points raised except to say how delighted I was to hear the Minister talk about the thought that has obviously been given to the convergence of the research on the development of the brain and the ways in which we can apply that in the early years to improve outcomes for schools. There is distress at the imbalance that exists in the Government's present policy because we do not know where we are going in that area. In my view, we are putting too much emphasis on bringing pressure on schools and not enough on helping parents in the early years.
	I am most grateful to noble Lords and I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Traffic Wardens and Parking Attendants Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
	So what is wrong with the way that things are? What is wrong is that, when this Bill received its First Reading in this House, there was a rumble of agreement that it should be so. The rumbling has gone on in this House, in the media and in all the letters and correspondence that I receive, and it must be clear to everyone that there is widespread resentment among the public—not at the regulations but at the way they are being enforced.
	What is happening is not neighbourly. It is not a contribution to our happiness; it is a detriment to our happiness. That is not what the regulations were intended and designed for in the first place. They were put in place to make streets better places for all of us: to improve the flow of traffic; to make life better for pedestrians; and to make it possible for people to park outside their houses in an organised way. The intention behind the regulations was to improve our lives. Clearly, those of us who chose to contravene the rules would find ourselves being fined or otherwise chased up, but the net balance should have been positive. However, we now find that the net balance is substantially negative.
	At the moment, we are facing not so much a system of properly enforced rules and regulations, with which we all agree, but a collection of licensed highwaymen who are roaming our streets and are intent on robbing us at every opportunity. We should not allow that to continue. It is not good for all kinds of reasons. It is not good for the wardens, who are perfectly decent fellows. I try to make a practice of chatting to the ones around where I live. I happen to have a resident's parking permit and so do not get into trouble with them too often. They are perfectly nice people and they are extremely badly paid. But they suffer a great deal of abuse, and I am not surprised. They are being told to behave aggressively and unreasonably. It is not the way that any of us would wish to see rules enforced.
	That sort of enforcement brings the local authority into disrepute, too. It builds up a tension and unhappiness between us and those we have put in place to rule us. That is not as it should be. The local authority should be our friend and servant rather than an oppressor. If we have that sort of relationship with local government it will spread to the way that we regard the police, government and other elements of authority. Lawbreaking and law avoidance will become something of which we all approve. We all wish to see it done because we are not happy with the way that the law is being enforced. That is not healthy for society.
	Going about one's ordinary business in the streets becomes a stressful experience. It becomes an added burden in your life if you cannot, in a quiet moment, pop in to see if Mrs Brown at No. 42 is doing okay as you pass her door because the traffic warden will not allow you 30 seconds in that residents' parking bay. You cannot pop into the local shop and buy a newspaper as you pass by because the traffic warden is sitting behind a tree waiting for people to do just that—and popping out and nabbing them when they do. This is absolutely not the way these rules should be enforced. They were not intended to do this.
	Looking at the studies that have been done on fixed penalty systems, principally by Fellows' Associates, it is clear that, in order to work, these systems have to be enforced in a way that has the consent of those on whom they are being enforced and that they have to be fundamentally fair. Otherwise they fall into disrepute and we will end up not being content to use them at all.
	The provisions in the Bill are intended to tackle those evils. The first one is the system of payment by results for wardens and, more specifically, for those who employ wardens. We all know that that kind of large financial incentive corrupts. That is why your Lordships' House goes to such lengths to avoid such corruption. We do not allow ourselves to be swayed in debate, and in our activities in this House, by financial incentive. Of course financial incentive bites. Of course if you give a company an incentive to issue more tickets, it will issue more tickets. It receives no benefit from letting someone off when it is unreasonable to give him a ticket. It is out to produce as many tickets as possible.
	For many councils, tickets have become an enormous revenue earner. I think that my noble friend's council had an income of more than £30 million last year from this part of its activities. I do not find that difficult. I have no objection to councils raising money in this way, but if they are going to raise money in this way, they must do so fairly. They must do so in a way that carries people's consent with it. They must not do it by some form of licensed robbery. There must be a proper relationship between the public and the traffic warden.
	The police understand that. If you are trundling along through a city street at 31 miles an hour, the police may stop you, but they will not fine you. They will recognise that you were exceeding the limit, but not exceeding it by so much that it was a crime. They allow a bit of leeway. If you have done something that was silly but not actually dangerous, they will stop you and talk to you. They will not necessarily book you. There is a human relationship there. That increases your respect for the police and your willingness to co-operate with them. When you do get done, you accept that it is a fair cop. That just does not exist with traffic wardens. They have become absolutely predatory.
	The financial incentive has clearly corrupted the way that the system operates. It was reasonable to give it a try, but it has not worked. We must get away from the pressure on companies to perform in a way that we do not want. After all, what these regulations should be about is improving traffic flow and the state of the streets for users. But that is not properly measured by the number of tickets issued. What happens round us is that the wardens target residential streets in the middle of the day because that is when they can be fairly sure that that is when people are nipping in and around and doing odd errands and can be caught. Where they do not target and you never find them is at the box junction outside the police station—because of course the police go out in their cars by the back door and never see what is going on outside the front. They are never there in the morning. The place is absolutely stuffed up. People are always stopped on the box junction because they have not given other road users consideration, but the wardens are not there. They are out in the streets targeting the residents. It is absolutely misery making.
	If we are going to have objectives for these companies, let them at least be the objectives that we want to achieve, which ought to be, for most councils, to make life better for their citizens. You cannot translate that into issuing a certain number of tickets or doing a certain number of tow-aways. That is even more ridiculous. Someone who parks in a relatively empty street but against parking regulations can find himself towed away after being just 10 minutes over time on a meter. What possible justification is there for that sort of behaviour? There should be a reasonable fine. But, to my mind, it is entirely objectionable to increase that to 250 quid just because you have a revenue objective.
	The practice of saying that the fine is £100, but it will be reduced to £50 if you pay within 14 days also can lead to corruption. Letters have been sent to me—including one from Kensington and Chelsea, I am sad to say—that say, "You can pay the £50 now. But if you appeal and lose it will be 100 quid". So people are being threatened with doubled fines if they appeal. I find that entirely unsatisfactory. People are being bludgeoned into paying things which they feel have been unfairly imposed on them.
	The appeal rates are extraordinary. In some councils, 20 to 30 per cent of tickets are torn up. That level of unfairness is generated by quite unreasonable pressures on traffic wardens.
	So, other than doing away with financial incentives, I would want to make sure that traffic wardens behaved in a neighbourly way and a way that we would wish to see these rules enforced. In other words, they should allow people some grace where there is an opportunity to do so—so that if you were 10 minutes late in getting back to your car, you would probably not find a ticket on it; so that there would not be a case of the warden having noticed you earlier and watched and, as the clock ticked past the minute, rushing in to stick a ticket on; and so that they would not be hanging round in streets where there is no great traffic problem, picking on people who are stopping for a moment outside the shop.
	I remember a campaign in Brixton where there were parking bays outside the post office. Wardens would stick hoods that said "Parking forbidden in this bay" on the meters, hide round the corner, catch those who parked there as they dropped into the post office to post their letters, and then take the hoods off again and go away. What kind of justice is that? It is merely a revenue-raising operation and it is entirely unjustified.
	What we need is a system where these regulations are enforced in a way which benefits and is recognised as fair by us all. If Kensington and Chelsea makes 30 million quid out of it, well and good, but let us, for goodness' sake, do it in a way that we are happy with.
	So I hope that through the Bill we may reduce discontent, increase equity and see an end to most of the endless stories in the newspapers of people who have been driven to their wits' end by the bad behaviour of traffic wardens. Beyond anything else, we owe it to those servants of the people—the traffic wardens—that they should be better regarded. I beg to move.
	Moved, that the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Lucas.)

Lord Monson: My Lords, I added my name to the list of speakers in the Government Whips' Office yesterday afternoon, in what I hope was legible lettering, but for some reason my name does not appear on today's list. I hope, therefore, that the House will bear with me for five minutes or so.
	I commend the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for introducing so elegantly and with such impeccable logic this worthwhile and, in principle, highly desirable Bill; and commiserate with him on having to do so after seven hours of debate on topics of major importance, when most people want only to get home.
	I shall start with Clause 3, since, if the principle of that clause is agreed to, Clauses 1 and 2 may not be so essential, at least in their present form. We have been here before. A little under 14 years ago, I moved an amendment to the Road Traffic Bill, which read:
	"Whether employed directly by a local authority or otherwise, parking attendants shall not be remunerated on any basis which relates remuneration to the number of penalty charge notices issued".—[Official Report, 24/6/91; col. 423.]
	The amendment received unqualified support from the Labour and Liberal Democrat Front and Back Benches. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, from the Liberal Democrat Benches, added his name to the amendment, as did my noble friend Lady Darcy de Knayth, while the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, spoke up for it most powerfully. It was also supported by the Church, in the shape of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, and by the judiciary, in the shape of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, and Lord Wilberforce, as well as by many Conservatives who defied their party's Whip. Notable among those noble Lords still with us was the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, who gave valuable support.
	We could not quite prevail against the large in-built Conservative majority of those days, so we lost, but by only seven votes. However, that was not the end of the story. Sixteen months later, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, in a Starred Question, asked the Government,
	"Whether they will take action with the authorities concerned to prevent traffic wardens from receiving remuneration in proportion to the number of tickets issued for offences in public parking places".
	The Minister of State at that time, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said:
	"My Lords, police traffic wardens are not paid according to the number of tickets they issue, nor is there any intention that they should be".—[Official Report, 21/10/92; col. 749.]
	The reply of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, was slightly ambiguous in that the assurance related only to "police traffic wardens". Nevertheless, the exchanges that followed made it clear that almost the entire House, irrespective of party, was strongly against "payment by results", with Lord Grimond, and the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, from the Liberal Democrat Back Benches, and, once again, the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, from the Labour Benches, particularly forceful in the matter.
	I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, whether her party is just as opposed to parking attendants being paid by results as they were 12, 13 or 14 years ago. If so—there is no reason to suppose that they have changed their mind; there is no reason for them to do so—will she encourage her colleagues to give the Bill a fair wind? I also ask the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, whether the Liberal Democrats have changed their mind. Again, there is no reason for them to do so, and I hope that he will support the Bill just as much as I do.
	The Bill probably needs tweaking in Committee. For example, Clause 3 may need to be expanded to provide that no employee may be disciplined, downgraded or dismissed for failing to issue a minimum number of parking tickets in a day or a week. The present wording might allow that one to escape.
	Clause 1(2)(c) is just a little ambitious. Metered parking now costs £4 an hour in the West End of London, so a 10-minute period of grace would cost the local authority around 67 pence. A three-minute period, at a notional cost of 20 pence, would be more realistic.
	If there were less pressure on wardens to issue tickets come what may, the petty unfairnesses that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seeks to remedy would, in large measure, if not totally, resolve themselves. I also wonder whether paragraphs (a) and (b) of Clause 1(2) would not allow motorists to park on yellow lines provided they were not causing—

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I am very sorry to interrupt the noble Lord. I am sorry that he was left off the official list. Bearing in mind the conventions of the House, we would be grateful if he could draw his remarks to a swift conclusion.

Lord Monson: My Lords, I was about to do so. Allowing motorists to park on yellow lines as long as they are not causing any inconvenience or danger to other road users is undoubtedly an attractive idea, but surely one that is not likely to get far. All that is for a later stage. Meanwhile, I wish the Bill every success.

The Earl of Mar and Kellie: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on presenting this short Bill. I always enjoy taking part in discussions on legislation by which I am unlikely to be afflicted. The Bill is likely to twang the heart strings of many a motorist and perhaps many a traffic warden.
	One of the joys of the politics of transport is that there is no one who does not have personal experience of transport and travel and hence have a view. I confirm that we have a lot of sympathy with the noble Lord's Bill. We are also amused to hear a noble Lord from the Conservative Benches complain about the product of the privatisation, outsourcing and incentivisation of traffic wardens and parking attendants. There is no doubt that parking charges can be a good earner for the local authorities.
	The noble Lord may have picked the day deliberately. I notice that the Evening Standard has today published the London boroughs' revenue from parking in 2002–03. It states:
	"as boroughs' enforcement profits soar . . . £300m: what we pay in parking fines every year".
	The figures demonstrate that substantial sums can be collected in surplus. I noted, among others, that Barnet had collected £3 million and Camden £13 million—this is the surplus, over and above their operating costs. Westminster had collected £33 million; Hammersmith and Fulham, £9 million; Islington, £3 million; Kensington and Chelsea, £16 million; Richmond, £3 million; and Wandsworth, £6 million. I noticed that two boroughs were reported as having made a loss. Barking made a £0.5 million loss, and Newham made a £100,000 loss.
	Public sector managers certainly have a duty to break even, but there is a substantial risk, as has been mentioned, that motorists may be alienated—to put it mildly—while grudgingly applauding the generous "break-even plus" of their local authority. There are reports and anecdotes about highly incentivised wardens giving out tickets for, for example, a visitor's permit being on the wrong side of the car, for a disabled badge being upside down and for a wheel being marginally on the pavement. Clearly, this is the proverbial situation of observing the letter of the law and losing sight of the spirit of the law.
	This short Bill is very tempting. It might help to take anger out of traffic management. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response.

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, my contribution to the Bill will be limited. First, it is not in my portfolio. I am helpfully sitting here because it is rather late. I also feel an attack coming on from behind about Kensington and Chelsea.
	Before I take part in the Committee stage, as I surely will, I shall need to check all the facts. I am certain that the borough of Kensington and Chelsea does not make £30 million. I am equally certain that it has contracts that do not allow for payment by results. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has been so incensed by this. I must ask him who, why, when and where. I am sure that his Bill will have a later stage.
	I have just one point to make, which concerns Clause 3(a). I doubt whether any contractor or organisation would entitle a payment to be made directly to,
	"a traffic warden or parking attendant".
	Whatever happens, that will probably have to be amended. I shall look forward to the further sessions on this matter.

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has introduced his Bill for Second Reading in a most informative, entertaining and measured manner. It concerns a group of men and women who are often vilified in the media, but who nevertheless do an important job—I am not talking about ourselves—which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has acknowledged. Often they do it in difficult circumstances and sometimes at the risk of physical harm.
	We should remember that the purpose of parking attendants and traffic wardens is not to punish motorists, but to supervise parking places and traffic regulations, and to ensure compliance with the traffic laws. They play an essential part in the management of traffic, helping to keep the roads safe and preventing congestion. Enforcement ensures that traffic regulations are not abused, otherwise there could be chaos on the streets. It is especially important as pressures on road space and competition for kerb space increase. Noble Lords will know that with more than 25 million cars on the road, you cannot have a parking free-for-all.
	The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has spoken eloquently in commending his Bill. However, I am afraid that the Government are unable to support it. That is not because we disagree with the principles behind the Bill or the idea of guidance in relation to the conduct of parking operatives—for we do not. We are unable to support the Bill simply because it is unnecessary: the Government have already taken steps to address the question of guidance on parking enforcement, and thereby on the conduct of parking attendants.
	The noble Lord will recall that the Traffic Management Act gained Royal Assent in July 2004. Part 6 of the Act provides for a single framework for civil traffic enforcement that brings together, in a consistent way, parking, bus lane and moving traffic enforcement by local authorities. The Act will also introduce new safeguards to protect motorists from unreasonable enforcement.
	During the passage of the Act there was much debate on certain enforcement practices, which were seen as unfair and unreasonable. As a result, Section 87 was inserted into the Act. That permits the Secretary of State to issue statutory guidance to local authorities about any matter relating to their functions in connection with the civil enforcement of traffic contraventions, which includes parking enforcement. In exercising those functions, a local authority must have regard to the guidance. So, for the first time, the guidance will be placed on a statutory basis.
	During 2005 we will draw up that guidance, alongside the regulations needed to implement Part 6 of the Act, following consultation with all interested organisations. Work on the guidance, which will include public consultation, will continue throughout 2005. We hope to complete that by the end of this year. It is too early to say precisely what it will contain. That will depend, to some extent, on what comes to light during the consultation process. However, as the guidance will deal with matters of good enforcement practice, I would be very surprised if it did not have something critical to say about parking attendants being paid according to the number of penalty charge notices issued, or any similar incentive. I am looking in particular at the noble Lord, Lord Monson, who directed his question on this point to me.
	We believe that such incentives are outside the spirit of legislation and we have already taken action on this. The Department for Transport has recently worked with the British Parking Association and others to produce a model contract which is designed for local authorities that appoint contractors to manage their on-street parking. One of the aims of the new contract is to encourage best practice by ensuring that performance is measured largely in terms of compliance with the regulations and of keeping the roads free from congestion, which is one of the primary aims of enforcing regulations, rather than the number of penalty charge notices issued or revenue generated. The contract has been available since November 2004 for licensed use from the British Parking Association.
	I note that the Bill covers both traffic wardens who are appointed by the police authority and parking attendants who are appointed by a local traffic authority. While the Traffic Management Act guidance will not apply to traffic wardens, their role in parking enforcement will diminish as the take-up of decriminalised parking enforcement by local authorities continues apace and police traffic wardens are replaced. Decriminalised enforcement by parking attendants, for which the statutory guidance will apply, will become increasingly the norm. So while we agree with the idea of guidance for parking operatives, and on which we are taking action, the Bill contains a number of specific provisions with which we cannot agree and which serve to strengthen our opposition.
	Clause 1 would require that a fixed penalty notice cannot be served unless a vehicle is causing,
	"significant inconvenience to other road users . . . a danger to other road users, including pedestrians".
	In passing I note that the Bill would need to be amended with the inclusion of the term "penalty charge notice" to cover civil enforcement by parking attendants. As drafted, it would have no effect at all on local authority parking attendants.
	However, whichever way the clause is drafted, we cannot agree with it. Requiring the subjective judgment of whether an illegally parked vehicle is causing "significant inconvenience" will impact adversely on the effectiveness of traffic enforcement. Many motorists could claim that, while their parked vehicle was an inconvenience, it was not a significant inconvenience. The argument might even be applied when a vehicle is parked on yellow lines. This could create great problems. Where a warden or attendant could not be certain that the level of inconvenience was significant, possibly in many cases they would not issue a penalty and the parking contravention would go unpunished. And with more opportunity to debate whether a contravention has taken place, the independent parking adjudicators at the magistrates' courts would see a substantial increase in cases that they had to deal with.
	Exactly the same sort of uncertainty would be introduced in relation to "danger to other road users". Arguments would arise inevitably over whether a particular parked vehicle constitutes a danger. The current enforcement system is more objective and therefore easier to understand for most motorists and enforcement officers. Parking prohibitions, restrictions and conditions are set out in traffic orders. They are then indicated to motorists by means of signs and lines so that they are clear where and when they should or should not park. It is then possible to illustrate these requirements in publications like the Highway Code which, of course, every motorist should read and follow.
	Motorists are aware that if they park on yellow lines during a prohibited time, they are committing a contravention and should not do so if they want to avoid a fine. We wish to retain this clarity for both motorists and enforcement officers. The proposal in the Bill would only cloud that clarity.
	Let us consider the 10-minute rule. Clause 1 of the Bill would also require that a fixed penalty notice could not be issued until 10 minutes after the contravention had taken place. Clearly, an easily recognisable time at which an over-staying contravention occurs is required, but one already exists—that is, the time that has been paid for at the meter and which should be clearly fixed in the mind of the motorist. Once that time has expired a contravention has occurred and a valid penalty charge could, and should, be issued.
	The provision would simply legitimise a parking contravention and award the driver with 10 free minutes' parking. In areas of high demand for parking, this practice would become common and the amount of free parking time would be substantial. Time limits on parking in high demand areas ensure a turnover of spaces so that a motorist has a reasonable chance of finding a space. This proposal would reduce turnover of parking spaces which, in turn, would reduce people's access to parking.
	We do not wish to compromise in any way the incentive for drivers to return to their parked vehicle at the correct time and to use the parking space properly.
	In conclusion, for these reasons the Government are unable to support the Bill. This does not mean that we are unmindful of the main thrust of the Bill—that of guidance for parking officers so that parking enforcement is carried out in a fair and reasonable manner—we are not. I trust the noble Lord will accept that we are taking action to meet the objectives behind his Bill by other means.

Lord Lucas: My Lords, I am encouraged by what the noble Baroness has said, which I thought, as a whole, was very fair. Clearly, if she is proceeding that wise, with that mind, and is intent on producing a set of regulations that embody the kind of principles she has outlined, there is something to hope for.
	I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will perhaps be able to express similar opinions because I very much hope that she will be a member of the Government at the end of 2005 and that we may see these proposals carried forward. However, I am left in some doubt about whether we take the part of the citizen in these matters or whether we take the part of the revenue-raising authorities. I very much hope that it is that of the citizen. Perhaps when my noble friend has a chance to talk to someone who does speak for transport, he or she will be able to tell me.
	Given that the Government are doing something constructive, and given that there is a real coincidence of wishes about what should happen, it is probably fairest to let it be and see how things work out, provided we have the chance to do so.
	I understand the Minister's criticisms of the particular clauses in the Bill. You have to put something in a Bill such as this to illustrate what you are talking about; otherwise no one knows what the Bill is intended to do. One would hope that, ultimately, matters such as these would be in a code or in guidance so that they could be dealt with flexibly. That is the basis on which the police enforce a 30 mile-an-hour speed limit. It is a clear limit but you do not expect them to be there timing you to the millisecond; you expect to be caught good and proper.
	As to the provision for 10 minutes over on a meter, this is merely a marketing device. I am surprised that the Minister does not recognise this kind of thing. Offering a free 10 minutes merely reduces people's anger at being caught; it does not necessarily diminish a council's ability to raise revenue or to maintain turnover. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Monson, is right that three free minutes would solve the problem. If you take that attitude, you achieve the same thing, but with people's consent. You build the three minutes into the pricing and when people are caught, they know that they are late, good and proper.
	This can also be approached the other way, and I hope that the guidance will tell traffic wardens that they are not expected to hang around waiting for the second that someone's parking expires. They can issue a ticket at that moment, but they are not to make a practice of trying to achieve that.
	We are looking for a set of laws, a set of regulations, enforced in the way that the police have learnt to enforce their laws and those for which they exercise responsibility. If we can achieve that, we will have achieved a great deal.
	Traffic wardens have a great deal to offer beyond just sticking tickets on cars. They are the most visible presence of the enforcement of regulations on our streets. I have lived in the borough of Wandsworth for seven years, and I cannot recall when I last saw a policeman on foot. I see them racing up and down in cars all the time. Traffic wardens are part of making sure that our neighbourhood is, in the daytime at least, safe and patrolled and properly regulated. They ought to be an appreciated and valued part of our community, and I would really like to see that happen. But for now, although I have moved that the Bill be read a second time, I do not expect that we shall see very much more of it.
	On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

House adjourned at seventeen minutes past ten o'clock.